


SECTION 17

by engineerleopoldfitz (aching_for_distance), sakurazawa



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-14
Updated: 2014-03-14
Packaged: 2018-01-15 15:50:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 36,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1310434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aching_for_distance/pseuds/engineerleopoldfitz, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sakurazawa/pseuds/sakurazawa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The rule that was meant to keep them safe might break them forever.</p><p>When Fitz is reassigned to a different team for failure to comply with S.H.I.E.L.D.'s non-fraternization policy, he and Simmons are stunned. After all, they weren't in a relationship. But as the separation turns to a brutal isolation, one that threatens his mental and emotional state, Fitz begins to lose faith in S.H.I.E.L.D....and the commanding officer that didn't fight hard enough against his reassignment.</p><p>When Simmons learns of Fitz's rapid deterioration, she's determined to fight back against the regulation, even if it means hurling her badge at Sitwell's feet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	SECTION 17

The email showed up at 12:02pm. Fitz glanced at the notification in the bottom corner of his tablet’s glossy screen and did a double take. What the hell was _Director Fury_ doing, sending him an email?

Then he made the mistake of clicking on it.

 

> December 27, 2013
> 
> Leo Fitz  
>  Engineer  
>  Level 5
> 
> Re: Reassignment
> 
> Agent Fitz:
> 
> Effective January 1, you will be joining Agents Hand and Sitwell’s operations team based out of the Hub.
> 
> An escort will meet you on the tarmac tomorrow morning when the Bus arrives in New York to make the transfer. You’ll have the three remaining days to settle in and familiarize yourself with the other members of your new team.
> 
> I’ll be looking forward to seeing what you can do with the superior resources available to you in this assignment.
> 
> Fury  
>  Director  
>  Level 14

 

What? Fitz had to reread the email a few times before it sank in. They were being reassigned. He’d grown attached to this ragtag band of misfits Coulson had brought together. He didn’t want to have to start over again with Jemma and another bunch of strangers. He grabbed the tablet and bolted from the kitchen down to the lab. “Jemma! Have you looked at this email from Fury?”

Jemma jerked back from her microscope with a grimace, “What are you talking about? I haven’t gotten any email recently.” She pulled her own phone out, squinting at it with a faint trace of her trademark scrunch on her nose.

Fitz had come to love that expression. It was too cute.

"I don’t have an email from Fury, Fitz. What are you on about?"

Fitz looked confused, and more than a little bewildered. His eyes tracked around the lab and he saw Coulson stepping into the lab. “FitzSimmons. Good, I’m glad I caught you together. From the way Fitz bolted out of the lounge, I guess you got the email?”

"Yes! Sir, I dinna wan’ t’ be reassigned. I wan’ t’ stay on th’ team. Did y’ tell them t’ transfer me? I know tha’-"

Coulson’s voice interrupted. “It’s not my call. They won’t say it because Fury decided he didn’t want this on record… But you two have been Section 17’d.”

"Bu’ tha’s fraternization, sir. There’s nothing…" Fitz stuttered out, hating that Jemma had gone silent, her skin pale and fragile under the fluorescent lights.

"We know. But Fury feels it’s asking for trouble to continue to allow you to work together, especially after the Chitauri incident." Coulson looked back and forth between the two of them, not unsympathetic, but resolute. "The decision is out of my hands." He personally thought it was terrible of Fury to split them up, but the Director’s word was law.

Fitz collapsed onto his chair and buried his head in his hands. “Jem, I ha’ no idea this was coming. I swear.” He’d never thought SHIELD would be so stupid as to split them up. Ever. He’d been a complete and utter fool, believing SHIELD saw them as people and not just pieces on a massive chess board.

Coulson made it to the lab doors before turning around, hating this last restriction. More than almost anyone in SHIELD, after watching them for the past several months, he knew what this meant. What it would do. And he was afraid this would end terribly before Fury came to his senses. “Fury wants a clean break. Any communication between you should be strictly professional. No personal emails or calls between you for at least three months. Understood?”

This was meant for Jemma. He was sure that Agent Hand and Agent Sitwell would have discussions of their own with Fitz.

"No, sir," Jemma said. "I don’t understand."

Her vision had tunneled, and she watched her own hand where it lay on the table, pale and impotent. Two steps and a bit of a stretch and she could have put her hand on Fitz’s shoulder.  
Section 17. It was a joke. It was a joke that had been hurled at them since their SciOps days. It wasn’t true. They’d never talked about it. There had been one time, when they’d both been a little tipsy and gotten ahead of themselves, but that had been Academy days, and they’d never talked about it, though she’d never forgotten how he’d felt, his teeth on her neck, his hips clamped hard between her legs as he pinned her to the wall. If there had been time, they’d have had each other’s clothes off. There hadn’t been time.

But to be accused of it now, when it had taken every inch of her willpower since nearly dying not to touch Fitz more than necessary in the lab, or sneak into his room and finish what they’d started at that post-exams party, before Robert and Sanjay had interrupted them.

"Sir…" she said. "If we’re…it we’re prevented from contact at all…"

She was tempted right then and there to turn in her badge. S.H.I.E.L.D. couldn’t possibly be so cruel. Not after all the two of them had done and sacrificed. The fact that they had already sacrificed a possible relationship, only to be split up because of that very possibility was almost too cruel.

But if she turned in her badge, they would just have evidence of fraternization.

"What will happen if we don’t adhere to that, sir?"

Coulson turned slowly to stare at Jemma, the gaze that had been sympathetic a moment ago cooling into a piercing, icy look. “I don’t think it’s in anyone’s best interest for you to test that idea, Agent Simmons.”

~*~

**Seven Months Later**

 

Seven months. It had been seven - long, lonely, silent - months since he’d seen or heard from Jemma.

Shellshocked from Fury’s email and Coulson’s pronouncement, Fitz had mutely packed his things that evening. He’d spent his last night on the Bus in Jemma’s bunk, clinging to her just as tightly as she’d latched onto him. He’d felt too empty and heartsick for anything to happen beyond that. They hadn’t been apart for more than a week or so in eight years, and even then there’d been constant emails and texts and calls to remind each other they were still there.

The next morning the Bus had landed and it all happened so fast that Fitz still wasn’t sure how the transfer had happened. One minute he was trudging down the twist of stairs to the cargo bay, his bag slung over his shoulder. The next he was in one of SHIELD’s SUVs, being carted to another end of the airfield and packed onto another plane within minutes. He’d barely had time to say goodbye to the entire team, much less Jemma. It had all happened so fast, it made him wonder how long they’d been planning it.

They really must have wanted to keep him and Jemma apart, because Fitz wasn’t in the Hub as Fury’s message had indicated. There, he might have had hope of at least catching a glimpse of her when the team came in for meetings and such, but no. Agent Sitwell had deposited him at a remote SHIELD base in Bulgaria they were using as a base.

Fitz was so well buried by SHIELD security that he heard nothing of the Bus, or Coulson’s team. They could all be dead and he would have no idea, as sheltered as they kept him now. Between Hand and Sitwell’s ops, he was tasked with studying Centipede’s designs, the metal structures they’d embedded into their subjects to deliver extremis into the bloodstream.

The engineer grew more and more withdrawn, the unappreciated genius of his active mind buried under layers of isolation and loneliness. No one talked to him here, outside of missions. His internet access was monitored and restricted and he knew his phone was tapped. His lab hours were limited to certain times of day and he was required to be in his own room at other hours. If he didn’t know he’d done nothing wrong, he would think he was in jail of some sort. It certainly felt that way.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t just Jemma he missed. While she took up the bulk of his feelings about being stuck here, Fitz missed the team; Coulson’s terribly dry humor, Skye’s puppyish enthusiasm, Ward’s gruff protectiveness, even May’s silent watchfulness. For a few short months, it had been like he’d had a family again. Perhaps a little broken and sometimes dysfunctional, but… Fitz felt like they had all cared in their own way.

No one here cared. Unlike on the Bus, no one needed _him_. They just needed someone to build things.

 

~*~

Everything led back to Fitz.

Bulgaria made her think of Viktor Krum, which made her think of Harry Potter, which made her think of hours spent tucked away in their flat, her ankles crossed over his lap, cups of tea going cold as they blew through the last installments, racing through pages so as not to spoil it for each other. And that made her think of how they’d always sat at that flat, him in his well-worn sofa corner, her at the opposite end, back against the armrest. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d tucked cold toes under his thigh, earning a flash of blue eyes in her direction, or just stretched her legs out over his lap. It made her think of the way his hands felt on her feet, the exact pattern of his thumb rubbing along her arch as he used the other to turn pages or drink tea.

He hadn’t needed to think to do exactly the right thing. They’d been practically married, even then. It wouldn’t have been hard to just come home one day and settle into his lap for real. He probably wouldn’t have been surprised, probably wouldn’t have missed a beat before wrapping her up, pressing his face into her neck and nuzzling behind her ear. She could imagine exactly how that would have felt. She’d thought about it once or twice, and she remembered the way he’d caught her looking, his eyes going a little mischievous, a smile tugging at his lips as he turned his concentration back to whatever he was working on, because he knew she wouldn’t. But he knew she wanted to.

They never had.

And at this rate, they never would.

So it was dragging the weight of those heavy regrets behind her that Jemma stepped off the bus into Viktor Krum’s homeland, unable to enjoy the sudden memory that Simeon Petrov, designer of the first air-to-surface bomb in 1912, had been Bulgarian, because it had been Fitz who told her that.

"Hey, Jem," Skye said, casting an arm around Simmons’s shoulders, squeezing her as if she could forcefully keep her together. "Coulson told us to go ahead to the tech hall and resupply with whatever you and Gavin need."

"Oh, good. Can we get him a new brain?" she grumbled. Skye flinched, and rubbed Jemma’s arm.

"I’ll ask if they’ve got any extra hanging around, but if they say yes, I’m blaming you. Come on. It’s supposed to be through Bay-C, across from something I think A.C. called a rocket silo?"

Jemma snorted, pointing at an enormous structure. “Looks more like a grain elevator when there isn’t a rocket there, doesn’t it?” she said.

They crossed the distance slowly, Skye never taking her arm away from Jemma’s shoulders. She knew. She was so observant, she always knew when Jemma was thinking about Fitz. She should. She’d held her through enough breakdowns and panic attacks to know. And now, she seemed to feel the undercurrent of the new thing that had been streaming in Jemma’s subconscious for months. The dangerous energy that rose to the surface whenever she was given orders, that had led her new colleague—she refused to call him partner—to call her hormonal.

That had only happened once, and no one had been prepared for Jemma to break his nose, though May had said he deserved it.

"-don’t know why grain would need an elevator. Why can’t it take the stairs?" Skye was saying. "Get a little exercise, maybe not be the biggest part of the food pyra…oh my god.” She stopped in her tracks, pulling Jemma to a stop.

Her stomach dropped as she saw Skye’s face. When she saw where Skye was looking—or, more accurately, at whom—she felt it leap up into her chest. Her face went cold. Her knees went weak, and she couldn’t find the breath to call out to his retreating back, but she knew it was him, and so did Skye. That walk was recognizable. That hunch to his shoulders.

It was a nightmare. He was so close. He was so close and he was walking away. And she couldn’t get the breath to call out.

Luckily, Skye could. “FITZ! HEY, WRENCH-MONKEY!”

Fitz had long since reached the point where he ignored people yelling his name when he was on his down time. Hand and Sitwell weren’t pleased with his attitude, but Fitz simply didn’t care anymore. If they were going to treat him like he was some sort of criminal, then he was going to act like they were his wardens. He was sullen and uncooperative, exacerbated by depression and frustration. Even his work was suffering, the brilliant leaps of logic and ideas that he’d been capable of when working with Simmons had degenerated to the bare minimum necessary to get his job done.

So when Skye yelled, his name went in one ear and out the other. It was Wrench-Monkey that did it. He stilled, hesitating mid-step. Terrified that he was imagining that voice, the affectionately fond nickname Skye had bestowed on him. Fitz slowly turned, revealing tired eyes, hollow cheeks and a couple days worth of scruff marring his jawline, his skin abnormally pale from spending most of his time in an underground lab. His outer appearance more than reflected the dead feeling inside of him these days.

And there they were. Skye looked like herself, but Jemma… she looked like she’d suffered. Maybe not as much as he had - she still had the team to surround and support her - but not entirely like the beautiful girl he remembered. Well. She was still beautiful to him, but that would be true no matter what she looked like. “Jemma,” he breathed out. What was she doing here? As far as he knew, none of the restrictions placed on them had been lifted.

It really was a nightmare. It was a nightmare. He’d turned around. He could see her, but she couldn’t get to him. She couldn’t make her legs move. She couldn’t decide if this counted as outside communication. Certainly, hurling herself into his arms wasn’t something they could relegate to a business interaction.

She gave a soft whimper as her whole body failed her. And Skye was suddenly keeping her up. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Simmons! Don’t pass out on me, hey…”

She caught her feet again, just barely, before she stumbled forward. She had to get to him. Had to touch him. Had to make sure he was real. Had to tell him everything she had never told him and just hold him again. Just feel normal for a desperate few instances.

 

Fitz took a halting step forward and then another. He didn’t run. He didn’t think he could make his abused body do such a thing anymore, he was terribly clumsy at running on a good day regardless. In reality he was still working on convincing himself that he wasn’t hallucinating Jemma’s presence at this out of the way SHIELD base, of all places in the world. Someone must have made a mistake, allowing the Bus to come here.

Three steps later, a good hundred feet still separating them, a dark figure appeared in front of him, the SHIELD issued suit lethally pressed and starched. “Agent Fitz, what do you think you’re doing?”

Fitz looked at Agent Sitwell, his expression stony. “I’m going t’ talk t’ my partner.”

“I believe Agent Hand and I made your orders regarding Agent Simmons very clear. Return to the lab. We need the report about the Centipede implants by 5pm so we can brief Coulson’s team before their next mission.” Sitwell’s voice was firm, clearly not expecting an argument.

“No.” Fitz’ reply was flat. It wasn’t just an expression of disbelief, it was also of insubordination. He was done with this whole situation. It was bad enough they’d taken him away, locked him in this lab in this inhospitable place with all these unfamiliar people, but now they’d given him this tiny glimpse of her to take it away? It was unbearable.

He shifted to step around Sitwell, focused on Jemma, and found himself accosted by two of the specialists from their team, who lifted him bodily and pulled him, screaming denials, into the building.

 

"Fitz…FITZ!" Jemma shrieked, and all the hesitation was gone. She was after him, legs carrying her faster than she had ever run. She crashed into Agent Sitwell, who had moved to block her, and she didn’t give a damn what he was saying.

"LET GO," she shouted. "Get off of me, I shot you before and I will do it again! Let go of me. Let go! LET HIM GO! FITZ! FITZ!”

Hands were on her, pulling her back, and they were strong. Much stronger than Agent Sitwell’s. The arms were large and hard and her foot connected with a shin.

"SIMMONS!" Ward shouted. "Calm down! You can’t—ow, Jesus—attack a superior officer!”

She was still struggling, and Coulson was shouting.

"-the hell did this happen!? You knew we were coming! You cleared us for landing yourself-"

Ward’s arms were going to bruise her ribs, and neither his vice-like hold nor Skye’s tearful face holding onto her, shushing and petting and apologizing, could keep her from spilling out the next words.

"I quit."

"-did you let him out here if you knew we were going to be landing!" It was May this time. "Do you have any idea what it’s been like for-“

"I quit."

"Shh, Simmons, no. Shut up—you don’t mean-"

“I quit!" she yelled, her voice cutting over Coulson and Sitwell’s shouts. "I’m sick of this—emotional chess! I’ve done it for seven months, and I won’t do it anymore.” She got her hand in her suit coat and managed to slip her fingers around her badge. She didn’t quite fling it—Ward’s arms prevented that—but it tumbled to the ground, and she kicked it past Skye. It skidded to a halt halfway between her and Sitwell.

 

The two specialists hauled Fitz down the hall and onto the elevator, taking him down the levels to his lab and locking him in. Fitz didn’t understand. What was so critical about keeping him and Simmons apart? He considered handing in his badge, not knowing what was happening upstairs, but he if he wasn’t with SHIELD then he’d _never_ know where she was or what she was doing. Not like now when there had to be some sort of break.

Only this had been too painful. To see her, hear her, for that moment and not… It broke Fitz’ heart. The last bit of whatever was inside him that he’d been clinging to, forcing himself to struggle through his days and do what these people asked of him vanished. He started with a beaker, hurling the glassware at one of the solid, boring walls and feeling a deep seated satisfaction at the exertion, the crash and the tinkle of falling glass against linoleum.

Over the next few minutes, Fitz single-mindedly destroyed everything breakable in his lab and only when there was nothing else close at hand did he collapse. The engineer sank to his knees and then into a prone position on the floor, shaking and silent, heedless of the broken glass cutting his skin.

Agent Jasper Sitwell watched the younger man’s rampage on the security feed, his usually impassive expression shaken. “Victoria, I know you wanted to force them to break their tie so they could be placed on different projects, but it’s clearly not working. This is cruel. Look at what we’ve done. Are you seeing this?” He glanced over at Agent Hand and then back at the feed, then suddenly leaned in to peer closely at the screen. A curse erupted from Sitwell’s mouth.

They’d already lost one brilliant agent today. They couldn’t afford to lose another, not like this. He had to get into that lab before they made an already terrible situation worse - that was _blood_ pooling on the lab floor.

 

"You don’t mean it, you don’t mean it, no, no, no, Simmons, please!" Skye was holding her shoulders, begging through the sobs. "Don’t leave—please! Please!"

"Skye," May’s hand was on her shoulder, but Skye batted it away, giving Jemma another shake. "Simmons. Jemma. You can’t do this. I need you. Come on…”

But she wasn’t responding anymore. She just stood there, tears skating down her face as she looked at the badge laying on the tarmac, flipped up to show her smiling face, and thought about everything she had just decided to give up.

Your contract isn’t up for another four months, Agent Simmons. You can’t resign. You’re dangerously close to a dishonorable discharge and two years’ prison for attacking a superior officer and failure to adhere to-

She’d spat at Sitwell’s feet. His teeth had clipped shut, face going unreadable. He hadn’t given any of them a second look as he turned on his heel and strode off into the hangar.

"Simmons," Coulson had said, breaking the breathless silence in the wake of Sitwell’s departure. "You might have just done something very stupid."

"Might?" Gavin had said. Ward had let go of Jemma then to grab Skye, who just barely missed his nose with her fingernails. "Need me to break that for you again?"

What would her parents say? She’d been a part of S.H.I.E.L.D. She’d had the opportunity to help the entire world. And she’d given it up.

But she’d done it for Fitz. They would understand.

"Agent Coulson!" It was a techie, running up to them with a slightly strained look on his face.

"They…Agent Sitwell asked for me to…it’s Agent Fitz, sir. They’ve… well, they need your doctor."

Sitwell managed to clear the top of a lab bench, ordering someone to help him move Fitz from the floor and up onto the tabletop. More followed, the older agent barking at people to fetch Simmons and the rest of Coulson’s team, to get brooms to clean up the glass. Still, the room was a disaster when Coulson and the rest got there. Debris was strewn everywhere, glass, microscopes, stools, books and other detritus that had collected in the room were scattered on every flat surface.

The worst part was Fitz, semi-unconscious, his already terrible physical state emphasized by the blood trickling from cuts all over the front of his body. His eyes were open but he didn’t seem to be aware of anything going on around him. Sitwell actually looked shaken when he heard noise behind him and turned to face Jemma and the rest of the team. “He- he had some sort of fit when he got back in here,” he explained. “Tore everything up and then collapsed.”

Jemma shoved past, heedless of the glass still crunching under her shoes, and slammed into the side of the table, her hands already checking him over.

"No," she said. "No, no, no. He’s in…shit, he’s in shock. Ward, get his legs. Elevate them onto something. Fitz? Leo…darling, come on. It’s okay. I’m here…come on…" She stroked his face, shuddering at the clamminess of his skin. "Blankets. Something. Now. Get him warm. His core temp has dropped."

She leaned over his face, her hair screening them. “Come on, Fitz. Look at me.”

 

Fitz had buried himself inside, numb to everything except the stinging pain of the wounds marring his body. If he’d been more sensible, he might have grabbed one of those shards of glass and done more to make himself hurt. Maybe end the hurt. He wasn’t entirely sure. All Fitz knew for certain was that he couldn’t do this anymore. Couldn’t be stuck in Bulgaria, couldn’t be separated from the team, couldn’t be without Jemma. Just that quick glimpse of her had reminded him of exactly what he was missing.

He didn’t have anyone here to talk to, laugh with. No one to tease him about being a grumpy bear in the mornings or when he was exhausted at the end of a long day. No one came bounding into his lab with ideas or things that might help him solve whatever nasty problem he was wrestling with that day. He missed the quiet moments, the times when he and Jemma would simply be together, curled in a bunk to watch something, her head on his shoulder and his fingers carding through her hair. Fitz should have told her he loved her. Not just let it go unsaid, understood but never properly expressed except in a hundred - or more like a thousand - silent gestures between them.

He understood that for whatever idiotic reason that SHIELD had come up with, he wouldn’t have any of those things ever again. And it broke him into just as many tiny pieces as that glassware had left scattered across the floor. So when Jemma leaned in close and begged him to look at her, Fitz didn’t respond. The person she knew as Fitz was no longer in residence.

 

"No," she moaned. "Fitz. Leo. Please." She dragged her fingers down his face and chest, the sob starting up in the back of her throat. The shock was taking him down with it, and she wouldn’t let it. A switch in her head had flipped, and she didn’t care. She didn’t care what happened, because if Fitz slipped out, if he just let himself detach like a dementor had sucked out his soul, she was going to go crazy. She was going to kill someone. Probably Sitwell or Hand. Possibly herself.

"Get him on a gurney. I want him in a bed, not on a goddamned table, and find an insulation sheet or something with thermal fibers," she said. "And I need a fluid IV and a vial of epinephrine or norepinephrine. Dopamine would work."

“Do it,” Sitwell motioned to his people. “Whatever she wants. Get it.”

Coulson stepped forward, his dress shoes crunching bits of glass beneath them. “Jemma.” He waited until he had her attention, scant as it was with Fitz in front of her. “When that gurney gets here, I want you to take him back to the Bus.”

“What? He’s on our team,” Sitwell snapped.

“And clearly you’re not taking care of him,” Coulson said evenly. “I didn’t agree with this harebrained scheme in the first place, and this is insane. Victoria’s ruined two of our best minds with this bloody experiment she cooked up. He’s coming _home_, with us.” He glanced around at the rest of the agents milling around, pointing at one at random. “You. Show May and Skye where his room is. Skye, pack his things and bring them along. May, make sure there are no complications. Ward, you’re with Simmons. Get him back on the Bus. I’ll deal with things here.” He looked around at Sitwell’s agents again, meeting their eyes, one by one. “The rest of you, get the hell out of here. Show’s over.”

The exodus from the room was disturbed by the appearance of the gurney, an IV kit and the requested vial tossed on top of a pile of blankets. The frantic techie who’d initially fetched them from outside pushed it into the room and up alongside the lab bench, “Here. This is the best I could do.”

"You can do one better and help Agent Ward move him," she said, snatching up the vial to confirm he’d gotten the right thing. She watched, sharp eyed and angry, as they lifted him onto the gurney. She tucked the blankets around him, popped the button off his cuff and rolled up his sleeve.

She made quick work of the dopamine, hoping his blood pressure would jump start. “Bus,” she said shortly, tossing the IV kit over her shoulder and fastening her hand on the side of the gurney.

  
Ward took care of the complications. There were only four, and the rest backed off at an order to stand down, issued by a very sharp sounding Victoria Hand.

She got him inside, swiped some of Gavin’s rubbish off a lab table and dragged out the gel and memory foam pad she and Fitz had created without bothering to put a sheet over it to keep out the blood. Fitz was moved. She kicked out everyone but Ward and a single tech, and once the hard part was done, she kicked them out too.

His body was making the machines pulse and tick and breathe. His eyes weren’t connected to consciousness.

"Leo," she whispered, levering herself up onto the table. "Darling, listen to me—it’s alright now. It’s all right. You’re home. You’re safe. Come on, sweetheart. Do I have to kiss you like Prince Charming? Are you a princess? I’ll do it."

 

Coulson informed Victoria Hand of the change in Fitz’ status, his tone clearly daring her to argue with him. She might be two levels above him in seniority, but Fitz was his, damnit. He’d never agreed with the plan and seeing what he had just now only made him absolutely certain that this was all one giant misguided mistake.

Making his way back to the Bus, Coulson looked at Gavin, who he suspected Victoria had planted to report back to her during this whole mess, anyway. “Gavin, pack your things. You’ll be staying here to take Fitz’ place on Hand and Sitwell’s team.” Good luck and good riddance, Coulson thought to himself. The man had done nothing but provoke his team from day one.

Skye and May trailed him back onto the plane, Skye with a bag of the engineer’s belongings slung over one arm. They all paused in the cargo bay, watching Jemma in the lab, curled up on the table next to an unresponsive Fitz, her lips moving in silent speech as her fingers stroked his cheek. “Go on upstairs. I’ll talk to her,” Coulson said quietly, tapping the button to open the lab door. “How is he?” he asked quietly,

"In shock," she said, her voice a little thick. "Down about ten, maybe fifteen kilos, and on his frame…? He can’t have been eating much. Just what he needed to function. Look at the preorbital hyperpigmentation," she said, running her finger along his shadow-darkened eye sockets. "And this is a good four days of beard. He’s always groomed." She checked his fingernails.

“So, a mess then.” Coulson said it heavily, guilt weighing on him. He should have intervened with Fury about this a long time ago. “If he hasn’t been eating… Could low blood sugar be affecting his state? Vitamin deficiency? I seem to remember there being some sort of intravenous nutritional supplement in a supply order awhile back. It can’t hurt anything to try, would it?”

He stepped closer to the table, standing on the opposite side, where she could see him. “I’m so sorry, Jemma. I should have fixed this. It shouldn’t have come to this to get him back on the Bus.”

Jemma looked up at Agent Coulson, not entirely certain she accepted the apology. He was right. It shouldn’t have come to her turning in her badge and Fitz being stretched out on the table in a state of malnourishment and shock. They should never have been under such ridiculous restrictions.

"To be honest, sir," she said. "If not for the threat of being imprisoned away from him for two years on grounds of desertion or failure to comply with orders, I might still be tempted to leave my badge out there on the Tarmac." Her fingers carded through Fitz’s hair, and she leaned down, pressing her lips to his clammy temple and not giving a damn that Coulson saw.

"The nutritional supplement is a good idea. Once the fluids have gotten his blood pressure back up, I’ll work on getting his sugar to a normal level. He’s so thin…" She couldn’t stop touching him, his face, his neck, his shoulders and chest, as if her touch might be all that could possibly keep his soul anchored to his body. "Leo," she whispered. "You’re home, sweetheart. Come on. Don’t do this to me…"

Coulson caught - and understood - the challenging look she sent him. He’d be adding this whole experience to a long list of regrets. “For the record, I could care less about Section 17. As long as it doesn’t interfere with the team or a mission. This was Hand’s idea. After Ossetia she thought that Fitz had potential as a technical field agent but it was too risky having him distracted by you and vice versa.” He caught himself, knowing he was making excuses. “That’s not the point. This should never have happened or gone on so long.”

He moved to one of the counters and took up Jemma’s comm unit, handing it to her. “Keep hold of this and call if you need… anything. I mean it. I’ll keep everyone upstairs for a while.”

"Thank you, Sir," she said, her tone softening a little as she recognized how hard he was trying to make amends. How hard he was being on himself. "Do me a favor and turn off the surveillance to the lab. I don’t want anyone seeing this and using it as grounds for a proper Section 17." By someone, she very neatly meant Agent Hand.

When Coulson left, she spent a long time just looking at Fitz, tracing her fingers over his cheekbone and his nose, half disbelieving that she was actually touching him, actually by his side. Alternating waves of fury and relief were tugging her in an uncomfortable emotional tide, and he was the moon pulling at her.

"Leo," she whispered, and kissed his brow. "Don’t leave me now," she said, and walked her lips down his nose, under his eyes, fingers smoothing the several days of beard, so long now that it was soft instead of rough. She came to her senses when one of the machines beeped, letting her know his blood pressure had at least returned to a safe level.

She pried herself away, grabbed the nutritional supplement she’d developed for the Mike Petersons of the world, and injected it into the side of his neck. She cut off his shirt, cleaned all the cuts on his body and sealed them, replaced the thermal sheet. She called Agent Coulson.  
"Can you bring his pillow down? It’s in my room. Blue pillowcase."

He’d said anything.

There was nothing else she could think of to do, she pulled up a stool and a washcloth, and washed his hands, using a small set of clippers she kept on her desk to clean the grime from under the nails, around the cuticle bed. He’d always kept his hands so neat. Seeing them roughed up and ragged now was like a sick metaphor for his general state. She would fix them.

 

Coulson sent Skye down with the pillow. If Jemma needed someone, Skye was likely the best person to be there for her.

Skye didn’t need to know that it was the one with the blue pillowcase. All she had to do was check which pillow had been spritzed with the cologne Fitz preferred. Jemma had somehow gotten hold of a bottle, even though Skye knew Fitz had taken his own with him. She took the pillow downstairs, quietly slipping into the lab and over to Jemma’s side. Skye would have put it in place herself, but she thought Jemma might snap if she - anyone - got too close to him right now, so she offered it to her friend instead. “Coulson said you asked for this.”

Jemma knew it was Skye, was glad it wasn’t Coulson himself who came down with the faintly scented pillow. “Yeah,” she said, setting down the file she was using to get Fitz’s left hand back in order. She stood, stiff and feeling about a thousand years old, and took the pillow from Skye. “Thank you,” she said. “I know I’m hard to handle right now, but…” she looked back at Fitz. “What he’s done to himself. And no one noticed. Or didn’t care if they did. And…God.”

Her arms clenched convulsively around the pillow that had been both a comfort and a torture while he was gone, sending up a faint waft of Burberry London that hit her like an olfactory touchstone, slamming her with a mental scrapbook of moments and touches and almosts. She remembered his lips grazing her cheek before she’d left on holiday with her family, the way she’d almost turned to catch them against her own, but hesitated, because he’d never worn that scent before and it was perfect and she suddenly wanted to bury her face in his shirt collar. Leather and bergamot and just enough depth and roughness and sophistication all in one breath. She might have lingered with her nose at his neck a little longer than usual.

She turned, lifted his head, and slid the pillow under it, adjusting so she was certain he was comfortable. Scent was a powerful memory aid. Maybe it could help bring him back.

Now there was an idea. “Skye? Could you… I have some perfume. L’air du Temps. It’s got a dove on the top of the bottle. I just think… maybe olfactory memory might help. It might not. But right now, anything is…”

“No worries. I think you’re entitled to be really pissed off and worried right now,” Skye reassured her. “I don’t understand how they let him get like this. Stupid SHIELD. ‘Trust the System’,” she said mockingly. “I don’t trust anyone but Coulson, and even he screwed up this time.”

When Jemma’s expression suddenly lifted, Skye paid close attention. “Yeah. Yeah, of course,” she agreed instantly. “Be right back!” The hacker bounded out of the lab and up the stairs to collect the small yellow bottle. She also snatched Jemma’s laptop and external hard drive, tucking them under her arm.

“I brought your laptop, too. Maybe music? The stuff you sing along with in the lab?” Skye suggested.

"Yeah, that’s perfect," she said, sliding back off the stool and taking the perfume, leaving the laptop for Skye. "Thank you. Maybe… I don’t know. Put on Mumford and Sons, or Bastille. Even an episode of Dr. Who is fine. Play Minecraft really loudly. Any of that will be something." She hesitated a moment, then flipped her head upside down, spritzing the perfume into her hair and on the back of her neck.

When she went back to Fitz, she didn’t sit down, but leaned her stomach against the side of the table, bending over him, letting her hair cascade down over his shoulder as she stroked his sunken cheeks. “Skye’s here,” she said. “We’re going to watch Dr. Who. The Girl in the Fireplace. Would you wake up for that? Or maybe the werewolf episode, where they’re in Scotland? Or maybe we should just start with Nine and work our way up to Capaldi.”

Skye gave Jemma a nudge with her elbow. “I’ve got a better idea. Isn’t this the episode that creeped him out so badly, with the statues?” She hovered the mouse over the link to Time of the Angels, but gave up on the idea when Jemma only gave her a wan smile.

She put on the requested music instead, playing Babel at a low volume. “I’m going to get you something to eat, bring some supplies down,” Skye finally murmured when it seemed like Jemma had forgotten she was there. She gave the other girl’s shoulder a squeeze and went upstairs.

~*~

Over the course of the day, each of the team stopped into the lab to spend a couple minutes with Jemma and Fitz. Coulson came down late in the evening to find Jemma slumped over on the stool, dozing with one arm draped over the engineer’s chest, her head on Fitz’s pillow and nestled between his head and shoulder. It looked thoroughly uncomfortable and he wondered how he’d ever make any of this up to him. They’d trusted him. The whole team had, and he’d betrayed Fitz. At least he’d been able to make sure Jemma was cared for in Fitz’ absence.

He noticed the IV bag was empty and found a second bag of the nutritional supplement nearby, quietly switching it out for her. The gurney they’d used to get him on the Bus was still there, cast off to one side with a stray blanket or two. Coulson quietly wheeled it over along the other side of the lab bench and locked the wheels, laying it flat.

“Simmons?” he said, trying to wake her gently, a hand jiggling her shoulder. “Simmons, come over here and lie down. You’re going to fall off that stool and hurt yourself.”

She woke up like she was dragging herself out of mud, and the smell of Fitz and the feel of his curls against her forehead drew an anguished sob before she even realized why. Coulson’s hand was on her shoulder, and it felt, very suddenly, like the world had ended. Like Fitz was gone. Like the body under her wasn’t gently rising and falling with breath, would never set those blue eyes on her with recognition, or startle her out of thought by blowing just behind her ear. He wouldn’t hold her. He wouldn’t touch her. She’d never tell him what they’d both already known and desperately needed to hear.

And she was done trying to be strong, or professional, or angry, because the anger was just a barrier set up to defend herself from the pain and the professional was a facade no one believed anymore, and the strong was a lie, because everything that made her strong was useless without Fitz, and she’d been convinced for just a moment when Coulson had shaken her that the worst was true.

"No," she moaned, her fingers clenching in Fitz’s shirt, hauling herself closer to his smell and the feel of him, Coulson’s hand dragging from her shoulder to her back as she sobbed, screamed, practically.

Panicked.

“Whoa, Jemma. Simmons!” Coulson caught her and drew her back to sit up, his arms around her shoulders bracing her from flinging herself forward and onto Fitz. “Simmons, it’s okay. Fitz is here. He’ll be okay, but I need you okay too. I need you to take care of him, bring him back to us. Jemma? Do you hear me?” This had been the last thing Coulson had expected. For a moment he didn’t see sanity in her expression, only a lost vacancy similar to what had been in Fitz’ non-reactive gaze before someone had thoughtfully slid his eyelids shut.

"Shit," Ward said, drawn to the base of the stairs by the scream. He reached back to steady Skye, who crashed into his back, her hair a tousled, sleepy mess. His gut dropped for just an instant, but the monitors were still going with Fitz’s heartbeat.

Panic attack. She was having another one. He was at the door, scooping her up into his arms and compressing her against his chest, because sometimes it helped her to just feel secure, and Skye had told him more than once that he gave the best hugs when he let himself do it. God, she was tiny. He remembered the way she’d hung limp in his arms in the air, knocked out by the electric discharge of the alien virus. Despite all that, she’d been strong. He’d been impressed.

It was like a kick in the chest, feeling her so fragile and hopeless now, and he felt a scorching power building in his veins as he looked over her head at Fitz.

"This is bullshit," he growled at Coulson. "It was bullshit the whole time and we all knew it. Why couldn’t we do anything about it?"

Skye was prying at his arm, trying to get to Simmons. Instead of letting Simmons go, he just reached out and grabbed Skye in, absorbing her into his arms so they felt less capable of breaking what he was holding. Skye’s arms were around his waist, and they had Simmons between them. It was weird. Definitely. But it worked. She calmed down, whispered apologies, let him lift her onto the gurney for Skye to tuck in.

Coulson stepped back and away, letting Ward and Skye’s combined strength, physical and emotional, bolster Jemma’s. They had her settled and tucked in within minutes, Jemma curled on her side facing Fitz, Skye perching on the gurney holding Jemma’s hand. As he watched, Ward reached to squeeze Jemma’s shoulder and jerked his chin at Skye, motioning to the door.

Skye nodded, but hesitated instead of following Ward immediately. She leaned over and took hold of Fitz’ limp hand, trading it off for her own in Jemma’s. Fitz would appreciate the gesture, she thought, and Jemma certainly did. Both her hands closed around Fitz’, hugging his hand to her chest.

They all retreated to the cargo bay, and eventually upstairs as the night dragged on.

~*~

Sometime in the wee hours, something about the room around him finally made itself known to Fitz. The familiar intermittent buzz and beep of the machine in the corner, the faint hum of the Bus engines, always on to power their network. The scent of chemicals and metal mixed with L’air du Temps and the warmth of Jemma’s hands wrapped around his.

His somewhat less than conscious state eased then, and while Fitz didn’t wake, his body shifted. Not just from near catatonia to sleep, but from the prone position on his back up onto his side, sliding closer to Jemma, their hands shifting so he was the one clinging to her hand with both of his and hugging it to his chest.

 

Jemma woke in stages, first aware that she was in the lab, then aware that she had Fitz’s pillow with her. It wasn’t until she registered the exact match of the hand in hers—the meat of his thumb fitting just so in her palm, long, callused fingers folded in a familiar shield around hers—that she startled to consciousness.

She was up on her elbow, shaking her hair back out of her face, and Fitz was there, next to her, facing her, something in his face relaxed as it hadn’t been yesterday. “Fitz?” she said, squeezing his hand. “…are you awake?” She shifted her torso past the lowered rail of the gurney, pulling herself half over him, supporting herself on her elbows and tucking her hip against his stomach on the table. “Leo… come on, come on, grumpy bear, get up.”

 

It felt achingly familiar. Fitz buried his face in his pillow, trying to block out the light and knowing the voice wouldn’t stop. How many mornings had he woken up this way, haunted by her? It was worse this morning, her stricken face on an airfield in Bulgaria fresh in his mind. He remembered wrecking his lab, the pain of glass slicing his skin and then nothing. They must have patched him up and left him in the Infirmary overnight. He certainly wasn’t in his own lonely, uncomfortable bed on the base.

Jemma’s voice kept begging in soft, worried tones. She even called him grumpy bear, a private joke between them about his gruffness whenever he was tired. Except all those inside jokes and shared memories and unacknowledged love and _Jemma_ had been left behind seven months ago and he was never going to get them back. He wished they would have just let him die or killed him outright. It would have been easier than living like this.

After a minute Fitz started cataloguing, feeling the faint itch of bandages on his skin, a vague ache in his head. But oddly, he felt… better. Something was different. And along with that thought came the realization that there were hands holding his. Someone else nearby. What? Confused and disoriented, Fitz cracked his eyes open and immediately shut them again.

No.  
Nonononono.  
Please, no.  
Not again.

He didn’t realize he’d said the words aloud.

 

"Shhh, shhh," she leaned down over him, kissing his cheek, his ear, any part of him she could reach, touching his shoulders and face with both hands, anything to let him know she was really there. "Fitz…shhh, wake up, darling, it’s okay. You’re home. You’re home. It’s okay," she was saying, tears now welling in her eyes and tripping up her voice.

"She leaned down, bracketing his face with her hands, and pressed her lips to his, kissed him, hesitantly at first, then with increasing firmness as he struggled against the fear that she might vanish. She broke away. "Leo McDaniel Robert Fitz, wake up and kiss me you berk.”

 

He froze in shock. Disbelief. A little terror. And then a burgeoning hope as soft kisses and touches were peppered over his skin. It wasn’t until she truly kissed him and then used his full name that his wary, abused mind considered despite the odds against it, she might actually be real. “J-j-jemma?” Fitz stuttered out, his fingers fumbling to find her hands as he slowly opened his eyes, wincing against the bright overhead fluorescents. “Jemma.”

Fitz eyes swept around. He was on a lab table, in the lab… on the Bus. The blue gaze swung back to her just as his hands collided with hers. “Oh god… Jemma. I…” Whatever he was going to say was forgotten when her order to kiss her came clear in his mind and suddenly his mouth was on hers, warm and soft, maybe a little desperate.

 

She gasped softly at the electric shock of his mouth, responding to hers with both more gentleness and heat than she’d anticipated. The inhaled breath left her in a rush, though, a few seconds later, when she leaned into the kiss and sank, full against him, her tongue caressing his, kissing him like they’d been doing it for a thousand years. Fitz. Her Fitz. He was there, he was real, and they were both completely done with caring about Section 17. Or Section 18. Or any Sections at all.

"Leo, Jesus," she whispered against his mouth, moving hers to his jaw and kissing down to his collarbone, tasting the blood from his cuts and not caring at all. "Leo, don’t ever do that to me again," she said, her hands clenching in his. Then she stopped thinking about anything but making warm, red marks up the other side of his neck and biting his ear softly, too full of him in every one of her senses to give a damn that they were in the middle of the lab. She spoke into his ear, her voice raspy with sleep and the screaming she’d done the day before. "I need you, you idiot. And I’m not letting them take you from me again."

 

It was too much. He’d literally gone from wishing himself dead one moment, believing he was still stuck in Bulgaria, to having Jemma in front of him, _kissing_ him. Fitz somehow managed to get his hands loose and grab her shoulders, keeping her from doing any more kissing. “I dinna understan’. Th’ las’ thing I remember is trashing everything in the lab. How? How am I back here?”

His head was swimming trying to understand the impossible.

 

"Sorry, I’m sorry, sorry," she said, catching her breath against his shoulder and backing off, only just able to get a hold on how confused he must be. "You went into shock. Passed out. I tried to turn in my badge, and Sitwell threatened me with dishonorable discharge, but then you were injured and Coulson…oh, he was angry. And he’s so upset. And you’re back home, and you’re not leaving, and Coulson is making certain of it." She touched his face again, restrained herself forcibly from just diving back into the comfort of his arms. "It took ten hours to bring you round. I thought…"

 

Fitz just sat there for a long moment, stunned. “Y’ mean… I can stay? I dinna have t’ go back there?” His eyes fluttered closed and he sucked in a deep breath, but it hitched and then quavered coming back out as he struggled with the rush of emotion. He pulled Jemma in, burying his face in her shoulder to hide the tears that he didn’t want to shed in front of her. “Chris’, Jemma, I missed y’. I should ha’ quit when I realized… bu’ I thought if I wasna part o’ SHIELD anymore then I wouldna know _anythin’_.” Fitz’ voice came out soft, muffled against her shoulder.

 

She slid both hands into his hair, the lower one stroking at the back of his neck as she held him against her. “Here, come here, sit up if you can.” She pulled him up, bent her knees and tucked them behind his back as she squeezed him hard against her, touching his shoulders and back, stroking over his neck and hair. “I thought it would only be for three months, like they said initially,” she said. “I thought I could stand that. But you were gone, and I missed you horribly, and it wasn’t the same. I wasn’t used to thinking without you. I wasn’t used to you not just being there to soundboard. God, I thought about turning in my badge so many times. But Skye kept me from doing it. I don’t know how you… well, I mean, you clearly didn’t handle the isolation.”

She ran her hands down his chest. “Don’t worry. I’ll fatten you back up.”

 

“Fury’s letter said three months. An’ tha’ I’d be stationed a’ the Hub. Obviously, neither was true,” Fitz explained. He clung to her, his fingers knotted in Jemma’s shirt at her waist. “I figured I could still email abou’ projects an’ all tha’, so i’ wouldna be terrible… bu’ they were screenin’ my email an’ interne’ access. Any time I tried t’ email y’ or find ou’ wha’ you all were up t’, i’ would lock me ou’. He let out another shaking breath and sat back from her, his eyes glossy and red.

“An’ wha’ was tha’ abou’, when I woke up?” Fitz had to ask. Had to watch her face when she explained that kiss. Had she realized the same thing he had during their long separation?

"The part where I made out with you?" she asked bluntly. "What the bloody hell do you think that was about, idiot?" She said, putting a hand up to his face. "I’ve been sleeping with a pillow drenched in your cologne for seven months because I’m an absolute nitwit for not ignoring the bloody Section 17 rule in the first place and at least earning seven months of torture fair and square."

Fitz expression softened along with his posture. “Oh.” Oh, indeed. “So we’re goin’ t’ stop lyin’ t’ each other an’ pretendin’ tha’ we’re only friends?” He said his statement just as clearly. Fitz and Jemma both had the habit of talking around things instead of saying what they meant, but this was too huge, too important to both of them to leave any ambiguity about what they meant. “Because if tha’s wha’ tha’ was abou’, then I owe y’ more kisses, I think. Make up for los’ time or some such nonsense.”

"Yes, I think you do owe me at least a few," she said. "Let me take your IV out first, though, because I can’t vouch for my self control after seven months of thinking I’d never get to see you again. I don’t want to damage you when I just got you back." Her hands were shaking as she removed the tape and slid the intravenous drip fitting and needle from his arm, twisting the clamp on the line to make sure none of the remaining fluid was lost.

"Alright," she said. "Now if you hurt yourself, it’s your own fault."

He watched bemusedly as she removed the catheter and tubing, but Fitz wasn’t worried about hurting himself. Jemma was forward when it came to her emotions and it didn’t surprise him that she’d practically accosted him as soon as he’d been in reach once she’d decided to do so. Fitz on the other hand was more reserved. But, he’d been dreaming about this particular moment for far too long, even before the past seven months of hell.

Fitz’ fingers crept up to bracket her face, taking the moment to study her before setting his mouth against hers. The kiss he gave her was achingly gentle, slow, and said much more than he could have put into words about how long he’d been waiting for that moment.

And then he was kissing her, and the world reoriented. His lips were warm, and her eyes fluttered closed as she sighed, letting him make all the delicate, warm sweeps and changes of pressure, working with him as their lips made gentle slides and parts, coming back together warm and breathless and soft.

No one had ever kissed her that gently before, and it was shorting out her ability to do or think of anything else beyond his mouth manipulating hers, his hands on her face, her hands on his chest, and both of them absorbed in togetherness again.

And _that_ reaction was exactly what Fitz had aimed for. His hand slid from her cheek to the back of Jemma’s head, tangling in her hair and bracing her when he deepened the kiss, still sending a message, except this time instead of ‘I love you’, it was ‘I want you’. He hadn’t deliberately thought about it in those terms, but Fitz really wanted Jemma to remember this, so it was what he went with.

When he did finally pull back, it was only because he desperately needed to breathe and reorient himself, dizzy from the reality of actually kissing Jemma.

There had been some heated moments in her life, some moments where the physical exertion of making out or sex had warranted being so out of breath. But damn. Fitz had done it with just a kiss, with just his hands in her hair and his mouth pressing in closer and closer, and she felt him think it. Felt him shift from gentleness and wonder and softness to an ever-strengthening press, a deeper crush of his mouth to hers, his tongue curling over hers a little rougher. His hands in her hair were full of need, and he was building the heat by degrees, and god, she was melting.

When he pulled back, she was a mess, breathing hard, pupils blown wide, uncomfortably aware of him in every inch of her. “That… was almost worth all seven months…”

“Worth waitin’ for… no’ worth no’ being wi’ y’,” Fitz corrected, his eyes dark and a little sad at the reminder. He glanced out at the cargo bay and then up at the camera in the corner, “I guess the res’ o’ th’ team knows by now.”

"I had Coulson block the video feed," she said. "Unless they all have their faces pressed against the glass like zoo tourists." She twisted around, making certain that wasn’t the case. Coulson’s orders to leave them alone still stood, it seemed.

She turned back to Fitz, smiling a little and leaning in to brush her lips along his cheek on her way to his ear. “I get the feeling they know anyway, given the past few months.”

Fitz return smile was shaky, more than a little forced, “I hope they took care o’ you while I was gone.” He couldn’t sit properly because of the gurney and what Fitz wanted to do even more than kiss her was just to tug Jemma into his lap and hold on for dear life. “I… had started thinkin’ silly things again,” he admitted softly. The phrase was their private code, tied to the matching scars on their forearms from bouts of depression before they’d ever met.

She stroked his face with one hand, the other lashed around his shoulders, giving a humorless laugh. “I was afraid you might. No more of that. Ever again.” She turned her nose into the place behind his ear where the curls started, closing her eyes and just holding on. “If they ever try to split us up again, I’m turning in my badge. It’s so selfish. But I’m not going to work myself to death to save the world if I can’t at least have my own piece of what’s worth protecting. I don’t even know if that made any sense. God, I’m so frazzled. Fitz. Fitz, I’m so sorry.”

“Deal,” Fitz said promptly. “We’ll both qui’, if they try this again. An’ is no’ selfish. Th’ hell wi’ SHIELD. We can work anywhere. I coul’ go back t’ MIT an’ teach if I had t’, for Chris’ sake. Is no’ worth i’.” He shifted toward Jemma, awkwardly maneuvering his leg around until he could do what he’d wanted, pulling her into his lap and grounding them both through simple contact. “Dinna apologize,” he whispered, craning his head back to kiss her, only able to reach her jaw. “Don’, Jem. Is over now. Is okay. We’re both okay.”

"We’re okay," she repeated, tipping her head down, eyes closed, finding his forehead with hers, then his nose. Blindly, she found his mouth again, stealing a few short, breathless kisses before restraining herself, remembering suddenly that there was skin under her hands, because she’d cut off his shirt to tend his cuts.

She rearranged herself in his lap, unwilling to give up the face-to-face contact, and ended up sitting in the hollow space of his crossed legs, the small of her back leaning against his knees and her own calves tucked alongside his hips. It couldn’t be comfortable on all the cuts he had, but she had the distinct impression it was more important to him to have the physical contact.

She couldn’t stop staring at him, so close, real. Here. Her fingers traced the shape of his face, over his temple and cheekbone, down to his chin, where she kept them as she leaned forward very deliberately and kissed him.

They were back to the gentle kisses, and Fitz was okay with that because they both felt more than a little fragile right now. He honestly hardly felt the cuts because the simple relief of being back on the Bus, of being safe and at home was overwhelming. He broke the kiss again, suddenly more than a little self-conscious, knowing there was a wide expanse of glass and the team could come down any minute. “Jem… Can we go ge’ the meetin’ wi’ everyone else ou’ o’ the way? I wan’ t’ ge’ i’ over wi’ and then go hide in one of our bunks the res’ o’ the day. Is… tha’ okay?”

"Emphatically, yes," she said, and kissed him hard enough to push him back to the table. She clambered off him, then made certain everything was out of the way for him to climb down as well. "You don’t have a shirt. Hang on, we brought something down. Here. You…um. Well. You didn’t leave it, actually. I stole it." She handed over a faded maroon tee shirt, long-sleeved and worn soft over the years, bearing a stylized logo of M.I.T. “In case you missed it. Now you know where it was.”

She’d been sleeping in it.

His eyes tracked down to the shirt and then back up to her. “I’d wondered,” he’d admitted. It was her favorite shirt to steal on nights when she crashed in his room and he’d distinctly remembered packing it the night before SHIELD had taken him away. He tugged it on and paused, tugging the collar up to sniff at it. “Did y’ steal my cologne, too?” He’d had no reason to wear it since leaving the Bus. He didn’t even know where the bottle was since the depression reached the point where he’d stopped caring about his hygiene.

She shook her head. “Ordered it as soon as the smell started to fade. I know,” she closed her eyes a second and shook her head, then looked back at him, the memory still fresh and painful in her chest. “Hopeless, right?”

“Shhhh. Shh, no. No’ hopeless,” he frowned, hating the look in her eyes and that he’d put it there, even unintentionally. Fitz pulled her in between his knees where he was perched on the edge of the table and cradled her head against his chest, lips in her hair. “I love y’. Unless we’re dead, is never hopeless.”

She had her face pressed into him, into his smell and the solidity of him, though he felt more like he had in the Academy, thin and not quite full on his frame. She clenched her fingers in his shirt at the waist, letting her forearms rest along his thighs, and leaned. Her eyes burned, but she nodded. “I love you too,” she said. “I’m glad we,” her voice broke a little, “got another chance.”

Fitz’ heart clenched, a stab of pain going through him. He should never have let them transfer him. Not without putting up a fight. “Me too,” he murmured, then felt the hitch of her breath and a slight shake in her shoulders. “Jemma. _Jemma_. Please don’ cry. Is okay. I’m no’ leavin’ again. Come on. Let’s sneak upstairs and surprise them. They all think I’m still asleep, yeah?”

She sniffed, buried her face in his chest for another few deep, Fitz-saturated breaths, and nodded. She stepped back, running her hands down his thighs to his knees. She squeezed them, then helped him down, a little unsure how steady he’d be on his feet. They made it to the stairs, then up them, then to the lounge, where she was unsurprised to find Ward sitting, alone but for a dram of scotch.

As they climbed the stairs, nerves twisted Fitz’ stomach into knots. What if the rest of them didn’t really want him back? He was sure they’d gotten a new engineer by now - he hadn’t thought to ask Jemma how the new guy - or girl, Fitz corrected - fit in. Fitz had thought he’d developed pretty good relationships with everyone except May, who was too inscrutable and detached to read, but he suddenly felt small and very unsure. Seeing Ward, Fitz cleared his throat. “Is a bi’ early for Scotch, innit?”

Ward is on his feet, and Jemma has the odd urge to step in front of Fitz, to protect him from anyone who might be a bit too overzealous with him. Ward’s face is rapt with amazement, which eventually breaks as he shakes his head, then smiles. “Hey, monkey,” he said. “Good to see you up.”

He leaves it at that, because Ward isn’t a man of many words. He knocks back his scotch, sets it down, and takes the few steps over to them to put a hand on Fitz’s shoulder, probably more gingerly than he would normally.

"Is everyone else asleep?" Jemma asked. "God, I didn’t even look at the time."

"Almost four," Ward glanced around with a shrug. "I think everyone's still up. We all went separate ways after awhile."

"Ward? Who are you talkin- Wrench-monkey!" Skye padded down the hall in pajamas, hair a tousled mess piled atop her head. She looked exhausted but lit up when she saw Fitz. Anyone with half a brain could see he wasn't himself, and she was careful pulling him into a hug.

Fitz awkwardly returned the hug, patting Skye's back until she let him go, his other hand still clutching Jemma's tightly.

"We missed you," Skye said, then hugged him again before backing away to let Jemma step back in near him. Jemma met Skye’s eyes, and there was a look of understanding that passed between them. Skye’s gaze flicked down to their locked fingers and back up, and her lips tucked up a little in the corners. "Coulson is… he’s in his office, I think, if you want to let him know."

Skye watched them walk past her, and Jemma could practically feel her restraining the urge to grab them both and squeeze them again, but when she glanced back over her shoulder, Skye was just standing there, her dark eyes a little glossy, and Ward had sat down, pouring himself another scotch.

"I guess now is where we find out what Coulson’s willing to overlook," she said softly.

He tugged her to a stop before they reached Coulson’s office. “No splittin’ us up, righ’? I wan’ tha’ in our contracts from now on, if we’re goin’ t’ stay wi’ SHIELD.” As far as Fitz was concerned, that was non-negotiable. Other things they could figure out as they went, as long as this never happened again. Of course, Jemma nodded agreement, so he tapped the button next to Coulson’s door to alert the older agent that he had visitors.

Coulson frowned at his door. It was 4am, his agents should be in bed by now. Still, he pressed the button at his desk to release the lock. “Come in.”

Fitz led the way in with Jemma hard on his heels. Their fingers were still laced together, and Fitz thought of it almost as a challenge. If Coulson couldn’t or wouldn’t accept them, he was ready to be done with SHIELD. No questions asked, just done. Pack his things and Jemma’s and walk right now. Before sunrise. Find their own way back to Great Britain from this backwater in Bulgaria if they had to.

Coulson glanced between them, his expression changing nowhere but the eyes. On Fitz, they looked relieved, then the quality shifted to something else, something dark and internal, and he seemed not to be able to keep his gaze on him long. He looked at Jemma, then their interlaced fingers and the way they were standing.

"I know where this is going, don’t I?" he said.

"Most likely, sir," Jemma said, but waited for Coulson to take action. The man inhaled slowly, reached into his coat pocket for a pen, and pushed a piece of paper toward them.

"I’ve drafted a rider to your contracts with S.H.I.E.L.D.. Read it, but basically, it states that you’re to be assigned as a unit, and in the event you’re assigned to separate projects, gives you the option of accepting an honorable discharge from S.H.I.E.L.D. for psychological hardship. There were reports on both of you that support this, particularly given your personal medical and psychological histories."

"I’ll need both your signatures." He pushed it toward them with the pen. "It’s good to see you up and moving, Fitz."

Fitz glanced over at Jemma, and picked up the paper to read through it. Coulson had been thorough, but it wasn’t enough. Fitz laid the paper back on the desk and straightened his shoulders. “I’m no’ signin’ tha’ unless y’ specifically exempt us from Section 17. I dinna care how y’ word i’, you’re better a tha’ than I’ll ever be, bu’ I wan’ tha’ in the contrac’.” His fingers tightened around Jemma’s, silently reassuring. If Coulson said no, they were gone. No questions needed. Fitz suspected that Coulson already knew that would be the case.

He started to ease back to let Coulson think it over, but he couldn’t. Not after what he’d just been through. And Jemma was important enough to him that Fitz felt no shame in applying a little emotional incentive. “I think y’ owe us this much... Sir.” The hesitation before the title was pointed and deliberate. Fitz had lost respect and trust in the older agent through all this.

Jemma tightened her fingers on Fitz’s, half in shock that he’d be so blunt and…well, sort of rude, but half because she agreed. She just wouldn’t have phrased it like that. She knew Coulson felt terrible, and the fact that Fitz was making his own feelings known was a confirmation of that failure. She was too much a healer to really ever let someone feel poorly for too long.

"Sir," she said, her tone more even than Fitz’s. "Fitz and I have talked. We’re… not okay with things the way they’ve been. Both of us will complete our contracted term, finish out the next few months under the conditions of the rider, but we’ve spent too long trying too hard not to be together, and after all that we’ve done, and all that we’ve been through the past few months, I think it’s clear that we are better off together professionally. The fact that this extends to our personal lives, frankly, is none of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s business. Whether I’m kissing him or not will not change my reaction were something to happen to him in the field, so I’d rather not go through the stress of trying not to."

Coulson was looking down at the rider, his jaw clenching and unclenching. “If it were up to me…” he began, then stopped, seeming to think on it a bit more. “I’ll see what I can do. This rider has been approved by Director Fury, but sanctioning an exception to Section 17…” he shook his head. “I don’t know if that’s something I can promise, but I will try. It might help if you presented S.H.I.E.L.D. with an ultimatum. I don’t want to suggest this, exactly, but I think it would be possible to change your status to consultants. It would make research more difficult for you, since your access to SciOps tech and databases would be limited.”

"An ultimatum," Jemma said. "I’m getting the sense you don’t mean a strongly worded email."

Fitz met Coulson’s eyes squarely. After the last seven months, he knew what he had to lose - and that was Jemma, and Jemma alone. He really meant it when he said he was done with SHIELD if they wouldn’t cooperate. “No, he means wha’ I said before. If we dinna ge’ our way, we’re gone. No ‘consulting’. If SHIELD wants t’ keep us, they’re goin’ to do i’ on our terms.”

He turned to look at Jemma and his expression was tormented. “Damni’, we’ve never pu’ a foot ou’ o’ line, done everythin’ they’ve asked. We’ve produced bloody miracles more than once, an’ they _still_ did this t’ us. We’ve go’ no reason now t’ believe i’ canna happen again.” His blue eyes flicked back over to Coulson. “If we canna trus’ our senior officers t’ protec’ us, then we have t’ do i’ ourselves. Is no’ like we dinna have options. Stark Industries has an especially impressive R &D departmen’. I’m sure Stark woul’ be happy t’ have a workin’ team tha’s familiar with SHIELD operations on staff.”

Coulson was staring at Fitz, his face wearing a closed, unreadable expression. He turned his gaze to Jemma. “I’ll make certain that goes on record. Are you in agreement with this, Simmons?”

She inhaled slowly, then let the breath pass out of her lips as she thought. Yes, she would leave with Fitz. She would leave S.H.I.E.L.D.. But to throw it in the face of the agency like that was asking for trouble. Fitz was angry, and she understood why—she was angry too. Angry on his behalf. On hers. But if they wanted to keep working with S.H.I.E.L.D., it couldn’t be with the organization feeling that they’d been manipulated. They would start to see them as a threat.

"I do. But I would frame it differently," she said. "I’ve never been in the school of thought that it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission, but…" she turned to look at Fitz, searching his gaunt and shadowed face, the almost feral quality to his eyes as anger simmered inside him. "Will you marry me?"

 

Fitz froze. “I- You. Wha? _Jemma_.” The words simply didn’t want to compute in his head. He knew what she’d said but Fitz was having trouble with her saying it _now_. In front of Coulson. When he’d just been rude and uncooperative and didn’t think the older man would appreciate him kissing her the way he wanted to right at that moment. Thankfully shock kept any of those thoughts from showing on his face.

He sucked in a deep breath and broke away from her gaze to focus on Coulson. He couldn’t look at her right then. “I think Jemma an’ I need t’ talk privately before we continue this conversation,” he said, voice as even as he could, given the circumstances. “Bu’ I think the exemption t’ Section 17 is the bes’ place t’ star’.”

Coulson eyed them both, still tightly controlling his expression. As much as he disapproved of Fitz’ behavior over the past several minutes, he understood. He even deserved that distrust. The younger man was right - Coulson had failed to protect him and Jemma. “Noted,” he said finally. “I will let you both know once I’ve spoken with Director Fury.”

At the clear dismissal, Fitz tugged Jemma out of Coulson’s office and down the hall, hesitating at his bunk. He didn’t know if it was even still his, or what might be in there, so he continued down to hers and tugged the door open.

"Fitz…" she said, a little bit afraid of his stoic silence. It had just been so obvious a solution to her—get married. Don’t ask for permission. Just do it, and force S.H.I.E.L.D. to either accept their relationship or discharge them. No going back. No demands that S.H.I.E.L.D. let them do anything. A clear sign that, when it came to each other, there would be no compromise.

And she did want to marry him. She’d known it from the instant the idea occurred to her. Marry him. Be with him forever, even after S.H.I.E.L.D. Maybe, when the time came, they’d even take a leave of absence. A year or two’s sabbatical to settle down, see what it was to be a real family.

But his reaction worried her a bit. She had expected him to leap onto the same train of thought, as usual, but he clearly hadn’t. She wasn’t certain whether he was going to be angry at her for asking in front of Coulson or not.

The door to her bunk slid shut behind them and he had her pressed up against it in a second, hands cupping her jaw and his forehead pressed against hers.

“ _Chris’_ , Jemma. Did y’ mean tha’? Really mean i’? No’ jus’ because you’re afraid S.H.I.E.L.D. is goin’ t’ spli’ us up again?” His breathing was ragged, reaction setting in as the anger eased and Fitz realized what he’d said to Coulson, but even that was nothing compared to the nervous tremor running through him as he waited for her to answer.

 

The impact with the door nearly knocked the wind from her, though part of her had expected it. She put her hands on his waist, partly because he was trembling and seemed like he was going to collapse into her if she left him without an answer too long. The smell of him assailed her once again, rushing her along with the sense of him against her, his chest and his thighs and his hands and his forehead.

"I meant it," she said. She tugged at the fabric of his MIT shirt, pulling him to her, pressing her front to him from chest to knees. "I want you to marry me. I want to be with you, no matter what, and damn what anyone else says. Damn S.H.I.E.L.D., and the entire world. We’ll work for Stark Industries, both of us, if we need to. Become filthy rich and retire at thirty five to a ridiculously quaint little cottage with a secret lab in the basement. Maybe get a monkey or have six kids, I don’t care. I just want you to be there."

“ _Jemma_.” The smile he gave her was somehow brilliant and a little soft, almost childlike with wonder. “Guess we’re gettin’ married then,” he said, still more than a little disbelieving, “You’ve go’ me, no matter wha’ happens with Coulson an’ S.H.I.E.L.D..” His mouth crashed down on hers, the gentle hold on her jaw slipping into possessive in the space of a second, one hand sliding into her hair, the other down to her hip to hold her still, pinned against the door. “I. Love. Y’. So. Damned. Much,” he whispered to her between kisses.

 

She was laughing, sighing, kissing him back, somehow managing to do all of them as his mouth and words would let her. Her hands slid around to the small of his back and braced him there, refusing to let him move away from her even an inch. The crush of him against her felt too good, the swell of joy in her own chest displacing all the negativity of the past few months for several blissful moments. “I lo-mph!” she giggled into the mouth that prevented her from saying it back and kissed him more enthusiastically instead, turning her head and inviting him to sink into it deeper. She could get her point across that way.

Unlike earlier in the lab, when he hadn't understood what was happening, this time Fitz was more than willing to lose himself in Jemma. Abandoning her mouth, he slid across her jaw to nuzzle at the tender skin under her ear, scraping his teeth lightly over it before soothing with lips and tongue. Fitz still couldn't remember why he'd never admitted he loved her before. Maybe the only explanation was that he was an idiot.

And with that, her legs were gelatin, and she was leaning back against the door, letting the force of him pinning her hold her upright. Her fingers found his back belt-loops and twisted into them, just in case he pulled away and she started to slide, or maybe it was to draw his hips more firmly against hers. Or both. There was a bright tingle spreading down her neck, intensifying with the heat of his lips and tongue, the slight, sweet pain of his teeth. He was filling her senses more intensely than she’d thought possible, overwhelming her with scent and touch, the taste of him still lingering in her mouth as he lit up nerves in her neck and hips. It had never occurred to her to want to be claimed, but the grip in her hair, the rough pressure of his body against her, and the bruises he was certainly leaving on her neck were quickly changing her mind.

They should have done this forever ago. To think, she’d gone all these years without knowing how good he was at kissing, how dizzy and useless he would make her in minutes. Or, maybe she had known, and just forced herself to forget, because she'd thought it could never be.

But now they were getting married. She grinned a little, though whether it was because he’d found that particular spot on her neck that released a deluge of hormones, or because of the thought of teasing him, telling him to wait until they got married (impossible), she wasn’t certain. She sighed, content either way to just let him carry on.

Fitz hitched her up a few inches on the wall, his hips pressing more firmly to hold her in place. The new angle gave him better access to Jemma's neck and he took full advantage, his tongue tracing patterns over her skin, especially the spot under her collarbone that made her gasp and whimper, her body squirming against Fitz'.

When he pulled back to kiss her properly again, Fitz realized he'd latched onto Jemma's hips, long slender fingers curled around onto her rear, keeping her snug against him. Fitz couldn't help but groan and grind against her.

She gasped and let out a soft oh of breath as his hips ground up into her. She couldn’t breathe for several seconds, a lifting sensation in her belly swelling up into her chest. She felt her lips flush, her face go warm, and suddenly she was staring at him, her legs winding around his hips, her hands finding his shoulders and clenching, not caring that there were cuts. She dragged him in to kiss her again, but he shifted, and she gasped instead, her lips dragging clumsily over his as she couldn’t not arch her neck a little, baring her jaw to him. One hand slipped off his shoulder and slammed the wall beside her, seeking for anything to hold onto.

Fitz took the open invitation and nipped his way down her jaw to the bare, arched expanse of her neck, leaving a streak of vividly pink marks on her fair skin. The soft sounds Jemma was making, incoherent moans from the back of her throat made him feel like he was doing something right for the first time in months. When he found her mouth again, Fitz’ fingers went to work on the tiny buttons of her blouse, starting at her neck and working down until it gaped open between them.

He wasn’t totally lost yet, though. When he stroked a hand down into her shirt, fingers tracing down to mirror the curve of her breast, Fitz drew back, wanting - needing - to be sure this was what she wanted.

She caught his gaze on her, his irises a thin, bright band around wide pupils, cheeks flushed, his lips slightly parted. Yet there was a slight quirk to his eyebrows, the barest hint of a question as his hand slid down over the fabric of her bra. Her hand slid off his shoulder, covering his strong fingers, and pressed them into the curve of her. She descended on his mouth a little recklessly, felt her lips crash into his as she found the back of his neck with the other hand and held him there, saying yes with her whole body, nodding a bit anyway in case the message wasn’t clear.

She wanted him. She’d spent too long wanting him, holding back. She didn’t give a damn anymore about anything except being as close to him as possible, having as much of him as she could manage. She wanted to claim him, to drag her hands over every part of him and explore the inches of skin that were going to be hers for the rest of her life. Yes, this was what she wanted.

 

Everything seemed to move terribly quickly after that, and Fitz had a moment of regret that this first time would be such a blur in his memory, but he couldn’t bring himself to slow down. They were both simply too desperate to be together again, and even though _this_ hadn’t been part of FitzSimmons in the past, they were both finally admitting that it should have been.

Fitz hauled Jemma against him and turned to sit her on the edge of the bed. He made them both laugh - her in genuine amusement and him in embarrassment when he got ahead of himself, trying to tug his shirt off and her trousers at the same time and fumbling both. He finally yanked the t-shirt out of his way and then focused on stripping her down. Fitz’ mouth eagerly mapping out Jemma’s skin as he slipped her clothes off piece by piece until she was bare before him.

He was still in the trousers from the day before, which were ripped in places and smelled of chemicals. But it wasn’t until he’d dragged off the last of her clothes and looked down at her that she noted the imbalance. Her hands, which had been braced on the edge of the bed to support her as he pulled off her knickers and trousers in one, lifted to his waist.

She pulled him to her, sitting forward, and kissed just above his navel, her fingers sliding along the lateral muscles, the depressions of her palms finding his pelvic bones and sinking against them as she moved her mouth down the curve of his abdomen, in the furrow where the last hints of the muscle he’d once had still showed. She had a destination, but she was going to take her time getting there.

His belly sucked in at the touch of her mouth, suddenly conscious - and self-conscious - of just how skinny he’d gotten over the past months, in addition to the shock of lust and dirty thoughts he got from what she was doing. Fitz shivered, his fingers sliding into her hair, not trying to move her, but just to give himself something to hold onto.

She took that as a positive reaction, and dragged her tongue gently up the left side of his stomach, her hands rubbing gently on his hips. She hadn’t really thought about how this would go, hadn’t really let herself daydream too much about being with him, about how he would feel under her hands, how his skin would smell, how his sweat would taste.

She found one of the small cuts just under his ribs and mouthed at it gently, the tang of iron on her tongue as she soothed over it like she really could heal him with a kiss. She wanted to. It was scientifically impossible, beyond the simple fact that endorphins and serotonin and the other chemicals involved with romance would supercede the pain for a while. But she would do at least that for him.

Her thumbs were making small circles on the inner curve of his hipbones, and as she descended toward his belt, she left a series of red marks that might have been product of the glass. She fully intended to go back over them later, make a constellation of little bruises all her own across his belly and chest.

Now that she’d slowed down and Fitz could actually think - somewhat - he gently tugged her head back, leaning down to press a kiss to her forehead. “Wha’ are we doin’, Jem?” he murmured. As much as he wanted… wanted her, wanted things to go back to normal, wanted to move forward, he wasn’t sure either of them were truly ready for this. It would be okay, he was sure of that, but whether either of them were in the right place. He met her eyes and sighed quietly, nudging her back to lay on the bed and following to cuddle up against her side, trapping Jemma between his body and the wall on the narrow mattress.

She slid under the blankets as he nudged her, not certain about the look on his face. He wanted her, she knew that, but as he pressed her back against the wall, the skin of his chest flush to hers and her naked legs tangling around his trousered ones, she sensed that they’d stopped their wild ascent, just plateaued in this place of skin and touching each other just for the gratefulness of being able to do so. Her fingers traced his ribs, his jaw. She met his haunted eyes and drew his jaw forward, kissing him with her eyes open and on him, making it warm and sweet, sinking her tongue into his mouth in gentle, soothing curls across his. It didn’t matter. Now or later, she had him. He was always enough.

Fitz groaned into her mouth, even the unintentional press of her hip against his arousal sending sharp sparks of pleasure through him. Even unsure of where this was going, it was such an involuntary reaction, this wanting. “Do y’ have any idea how many times I’ve dreamed abou’ this?” he murmured between kisses, his hand wandering up her body, fingers skimming over curves that were previously off-limits.

“Probably the same number of times I’ve tried not to,” she whispered back, sighing as the warmth of his palm cupped her breast, the calluses a pleasant friction over the soft skin. She kissed him again, pulling back slowly and loving the way their lips clung, as if they didn’t want to part.

Desire was a coal, smoldering in her abdomen, but no longer so urgently. Her fingers had gone a bit numb, though, all her senses focused on the more sensual points of contact--his hands on her, their hips pressed close and maddening, his rough jaw and soft mouth, even with it’s worried and chewed skin. She smiled at him, perfectly willing to get drunk on the feeling of just being here with him. “I thought about teasing you,” she said. “Telling you we should wait till we’re married. But then I realized I didn’t really care to…”

“No, I dinna wan’ t’ wai’, no’ when i’ migh’ be months before we can take leave an’ go celebrate,” Fitz murmured against the curve of her shoulder, “Bu’ maybe no’ jus’ this second. I wasna exactly prepared t’ be back on th’ Bus, or for y’ to jus’ kiss me like tha’, or t’ propose…” He nuzzled against her skin, pressing kisses there between his words. “No’ tha’ I’m complainin’, because I’m no’, bu’ I’m sor’ o’ glad y’ slowed things down. I dinna think either o’ us wan’ y’ gettin’ pregnan’ because we werena usin’ our brains.”

She paused, her hand halfway down his back, and let out a belly laugh. “I hadn’t even thought of….Fitz, I’m an idiot. I’m a biologist and I didn’t think of that. I mean, I'm on medication, but that's not always 100%.” She pressed her face into his neck, still giggling. “Oh, help. That could have been a bit...well, talk about giving S.H.I.E.L.D. an ultimatum. Nothing like a pregnant agent for that.”

She was still giggling as she pulled him against her, again, sliding her hand forward to his belt. “Still, this is biting into my stomach. I’m taking it off.” She unbuckled it, but found it difficult to pull from the loops on his trousers until he lifted up a little. “And you’d best not think that gets you totally off the hook,” she said, dropping his belt off the side of the bed, a motion that brought her body across his. When she settled back, it was with slightly more of her weight on him than before. She liked that, liked that he could get both arms around her, had both hands to touch her with.

Relieved that she wasn’t upset, Fitz’ shoulders eased. With his arms already wrapped around Jemma, it was easy for Fitz to tug her over, her smaller body sprawling over his. The warmth of her pressed against him, the last of the tension slipped away and Fitz sighed quietly, contented. His fingers slid a slow path down her spine and back up.

She pushed up a little onto her elbows so she could look at him, so her chest peeled back a bit from his, enough to hint, but not enough to outright provoke. She slid her fingers into his hair and traced her thumbs along his temples and cheekbones, caressed them over his ears. “We’ll be all right,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what happens around us. We’ll be okay. Together. We always are.”

“O’ course,” he said immediately. “If you’d wanted t’ stay jus’ friends, i’ would still be fine. Well. Until you’d foun’ someone else, maybe.” He brought his hands back up to run the back of his knuckles over her cheek. “Everythin’ feels a li’l unreal righ’ now. Yesterday I was thinkin’ abou’ which chemicals I had in the lab tha’ would kill me an’ today I’m in a bed wi’ _you_ an’ i’ jus’... I’m still no’ sure I’m no’ still unconscious in tha’ lab an’ dreamin’ all this up.”

He pushed up enough to brush another kiss against her mouth. “I mean, I think y’ can tell tha’ is no’ tha’ I dinna wan’ y’, even if we did have protection handy, bu’ I also wan’ t’ be able to… I don’ know. Remember i’ properly? No’ fuzzed ou’ because my brain is no’ all here righ’ now.”

“Neither of our brains are all here right now,” she said. “So, yeah. That’s not a terrible call, to be honest. Though this is a bit unfair,” she said, moving her knee up the outside of his thigh a bit. “Fuzzy as your brain may be, you still managed to get me without a stitch on. I barely managed your tee shirt.” She leaned down to kiss him, though it was a little difficult to hold the kiss with the grin that kept pulling back her lips. “I’m a bit frightened of what’s going to happen when you’re in your right mind. Frightened? Hmm. No, frightened is the wrong word.”

She traced a fingertip down his shoulder, leaning her chin in the heel of her other hand. “I say we stay here anyway,” she said. “Be lazy until everyone else is up and then walk out of here conspicuous and disheveled and engaged.”

Fitz made a face at her, but it was an odd mixture of amused and relieved. He cupped her face and leaned up to give her a kiss and when he leaned back there was a dangerously mischievous smile on his face. “Well, I dinna know abou’ y’, bu’ I think I should ha’ taken a shower before comin’ in here. I probably reek.”

“I’m sure I smell no better,” she said. “But I do have to worry about water conservation on this plane. Especially hot water. It runs out so fast.” She was laughing a little, blushing because she almost couldn’t believe they were talking about this, and almost couldn’t believe it might happen. Still, it did sound like fun. And it might give her a better look at some of those cuts.

He blushed a little too, surprised at his own daring. “Up t’ you, o’ course. Y’ can always jus’ keep me company, too,” he said softly, suddenly shy again and glancing away from her. “I don’ wan’ y’ too far away righ’ now.”

“Well what fun is that?” she murmured, fingers trickling through the hair over his ears. “I’m sure we can behave ourselves well enough not to get in any trouble, don’t you think? You can let me give you a bit of a shave. Maybe trim up your hair a bit after. Get you feeling proper again.”

“Yeah, I noticed y’ already started on my hands,” Fitz muttered, but he wasn’t irritated. He could practically see it in his head, Jemma fussing over his hands because she didn’t have anything else to do while she waited for him to wake up. He usually was far more finicky about his hygiene - Jemma had learned to start pestering him whenever he started slipping to figure out what was wrong. “Surprised y’ didna go after the scruff then, too.”

Fitz suddenly wondered if he’d ever really _appreciated_ her enough. She was his partner, his best friend, the other half of him, but he suddenly felt like he didn’t do enough for her in the past. He’d never really paid a lot of attention to the little things, not like Jemma did.

“Well, I wasn’t keen on holding anything sharp near you at that point,” she said. “You had enough cuts to be going on with.” A little reluctantly, she pushed up off him, then spied her dressing gown and a towel. “Alright, then,” she said, and slid out from under the covers into the chill air. Part of her thought about being self-conscious for the two steps to the wall, where her robe dangled from a hook, but Fitz had just finished putting his hands all over her, and while she had never been sure enough of her body to display it the way Skye did, she had never had too much issue with it. That just hadn’t been a part of her young life--no TV or advertisements when you traveled around the world, digging up dinosaurs and testing soil with your parents.

She felt his eyes on her and glanced back, smiling a little at the way he was watching her. She tossed him a towel. “Come on.”

 

His mouth went dry at the sight of her, her body completely exposed to him for those brief moments before the robe slid into place. He reached to catch her wrist, keeping her from leaving while he eased himself up and to his feet. Fitz’ movements were even less coordinated than usual and he blushed faintly even as he leaned in to kiss her, slow and soft. “You’re beautiful,” he murmured against her mouth.

She smiled, sliding her hands up his bare arms, over his shoulders, touching him just for the pleasure of it as he kissed her. She hadn’t even gotten the robe tied, but that just made it nicer to lean against him, to torture him with the stripe of skin against skin as she kissed back. “I know,” she breathed, scrunching her nose just a little as she nudged it against his. “Well, I know you think so.” She kissed him again, teeth gently plucking at his lower lip as she took a step back toward the door.

He gave her a faint, tired smile and reluctantly let her go, grabbing his t-shirt and tugging it back on while she tied off the robe. It didn’t take long before they were both in the Bus’ bathroom, stripping right back down again, Fitz more self-conscious under the bright fluorescent light. If he could have turned the damn things off, he would have, but the lights in here were on a motion sensor.

The trousers were ruined, he noted. Not that it mattered, since they were a size or two too big for him now anyway. Taking them off revealed more cuts and slices, the ones on his lower legs and shins deeper than the ones on his upper body from where he’d fallen to his knees onto the broken glass in the lab. Fitz sucked in a breath, bracing himself before he lost his pants, too.

Jemma carefully did not stare, but it was hard not to steal a few peeks as she adjusted the water temperature. She dropped her robe, setting the water as hot as she could stand it to fill the chill bus air with steam. She turned to him, stepped against his side and pressed a kiss to his shoulder as she wound her arms around his waist and urged him into the shower.

He really was filthy, and it took her a few moments of deliberation to decide which of the soaps to use that wouldn’t irritate his cuts too much. “Here, put your back to me,” she said, turning him around and sliding her hands up his back, helping the water rinse off the worst of the chemical and blood crust on his skin

It was easier, not to have to face her. Fitz suddenly felt terribly vulnerable and broken, and despite everything that had happen since he’d awoken back on the Bus, he was a little terrified of what came next. He hated feeling this way, wishing he could be stronger for her. She deserved someone who wasn’t a mess, but he was too selfish to give her up.

The shower stall was cramped with the two of them in it. Fitz folded his arms and braced them against the wall, leaning forward to bury his face against them so she could work unimpeded. Jemma’s small hands slicking over his skin nearly negated the sting of soap in raw wounds, but not completely. He hissed from that now and again, and less often there was a quiet groan that had more to do with arousal than pain.

Jemma tried to keep it from hurting, but some of the cuts needed more cleaning than gentleness would allow. She worked her way down his back, bending, then kneeling to work on his legs, which were in worse shape than she’d anticipated. It was less weird to be in a shower with a guy than it was to remind herself that that guy was Fitz. Pressing herself against his back, kissing his spine as she slid both arms around his chest and stroked her hands downward, that was a bit easier to recall.

Fitz lifted away from the wall with a sigh and made the mistake of glancing down. The sight of her hands on him, even with the soapy washcloth in the one, made him shudder and let out another quiet groan. If anything, the contrast in texture between Jemma’s soft skin and the slightly nubby roughness of the washcloth was keeping him off balance, not knowing which to expect. She kept going, further down and he belatedly realized she had every intention of washing him from head to toe. The moan he let out this time was definitely audible as he buried his head against his arms again.

Part of her wanted to be shy about it, but they were naked together in a shower--the time for shyness had passed. Her hands moved down his abdomen, and when she finally did touch him, it was knowing she couldn’t make it perfunctory. She leaned her cheek against his back, between his shoulder blades, letting the spray of the shower hit her, and braced his hipbone with her washcloth-hand. Her bare hand slid down, following the path of hair until she had him, already partially aroused by her touch.

She dropped the washcloth, sliding her arm around his waist to hug him back against her as she drew the ring of her fingers up, letting him shudder into her arms. She wanted to hold him, relax him, wanted the moment to feel loving and not frantic. She kissed his shoulder, then settled her head back where it was, still exploring his shape and reactions, being gentle as she could about it until he gave her the physical or vocal feedback to move forward or pull back.

"God, _Jemma_." It came out quiet and rough, gritty with emotion, and he shivered into her hold. One hand came down to cover hers, not to pull away, but to squeeze her fingers a little tighter around him and show her the little twist he liked. When he let her go a moment later and she did it on her own, Fitz' knees nearly dropped out on him, and he thrust into her hand before he'd consciously decided to do so.

She gasped a little as he moved, keeping her grip firm and her motions steady as she braced his hip with her other hand, trying to still his movements. She wanted to groan, the soft noises he made, the obvious way he swelled and heated in her hand--it was exactly what she’d wanted.

She felt his muscles twitching and pressed her hips forward against his, hugging him back against her to steady him as she focused high, pressing her thumb in small circles over the glans, alert for reactions. She could already tell it was going to be quick, but that was for the better--he needed it. He needed that mind-emptying moment of orgasm. He needed the rush of good hormones, the cocktail of soporific elements that would draw him inevitably toward sleep, and therefore recovery. She wanted to give that to him. Just as much, she wanted to touch him, to be here for him in a way he couldn’t deny or forget.

 

This was not what he’d expected to happen when he’d teasingly suggested she join him in the shower. Fitz felt selfish, that he was letting her do this and not giving her anything in return, but he’d sort of fantasized about this before. He rocked into her, slow at first, hesitant even, until he finally gave into the pleasure of her slender fingers wrapped around him, the curves of her body pressed slick and warm against his back. Even the gentle grip of her other hand on his hip - it all melded into a perfect rush of lust and love until he couldn’t stand it anymore.

Fitz’ fingers closed over hers again, squeezing tight as he came with a quiet groan, his body shuddering helplessly against her.

His hand closing over hers was all the warning she needed. “Fitz,” she whispered as he groaned, moving her hand the last few strokes before he finally released. She groaned with him, the satisfaction of feeling him come under her hands sending a twin pulses of pride and lust through her. She let him shudder, rubbing her hands down his hips and quads, kissing his spine until he sagged a little against the wall. That was what she’d been going for, that slack exhaustion.

She tugged at his shoulder, turning him around so she could step forward and press herself into him. She wanted to kiss him, to share his descent from that high, make it gentler and easier to come back down. She also craved it--his mouth, lazy and drunk against hers, the warm, slow kissing that came after sex, when the other person’s mind was still so wound up in the experience they couldn’t spare thought to delicacy or hesitation.

Then there was the feel of him flush against her, skin to skin, the tautness of his thighs next to the softness of hers, his too-spare figure against her modest curves. They were both damp and warm, slick skin catching and sliding against each other in a way that made her feel at once relaxed and very aware of him against her.

Fitz draped his arms around her, loosely, because his muscles had no strength in them at the moment, and took her with him when he slid down the wall to the floor of the shower. Cradling Jemma against him, hormones and endorphins on top of trauma and exhaustion left him mostly senseless. It took Fitz a few moments to find her mouth, nuzzling blindly against her cheek and jawbone until he managed to kiss her properly.

“Chris’, Jem, y’ didna ha’ t’ do tha’,” he whispered, barely audible over the crash of the water still pouring down around them. His brogue was thicker than usual, rough with emotion, “Nex’ time is your turn,” he muttered, “I promise.”

“I’m not concerned with it being even fifty-fifty,” she murmured, kissing his chin, then his ear. “And I’m pretty certain you’re going to sleep like the dead as soon as I get you shaved, dressed, and back in bed, which--really--is part of the goal. Plus…” she nuzzled into his scruffy neck and kissed his throat. “...I didn’t want to wait to touch you.”

She reached up to the shower ledge and snagged a bottle of shampoo, turning around in his arms and handing it to him. “Here’s what you can do right now, though. Wash my hair, yeah?”

There was a rush of tenderness on top of the love he already felt for her. How did Jemma always _know_? She was so good at knowing just what he needed, even before he did, and never making him feel stupid or uncomfortable about it. Her back presented to him, Fitz brushed her hair aside, simply pressing his lips to the spot where her neck and shoulder joined.

“I love y’ so damn much,” he whispered, before leaning back to crack open the shampoo bottle.

He’d never tried to wash anyone’s hair but his own before, so he was extra careful when he started lathering the shampoo in her hair, gentle and careful not to snag in her long locks while he rubbed her scalp with his callused fingertips.

She relaxed her legs, watching the water disappear down the drain, wondering if they were really conserving any water at all. Not that the water on the Bus was exactly perfect. A lot of it was pushed through a filtration system and pumped back through, and there was a separate tank for their drinking water, which would have tasted strange given all the filtration and added chemicals.

She tipped her head back as Fitz’s fingers massaged her scalp, closing her eyes to keep from getting suds in them. She rinsed her hair, handed him the conditioner, laughed a little when it confused him. Then she turned around in his arms, linking her legs over his in what would have been a rather dangerously-tempting position if he had not so recently gotten off. She reached for her own razor--his hadn’t been unpacked yet--and changed out the heads on it, not sure if he wouldn’t be a little unnerved by the idea of her shaving his face with something that had already shaved her legs. It wasn’t weird to her, but Fitz was sometimes funny about those things.

She was careful about it, tipping his head from side to side, remembering to shave with the grain rather than against it. It wasn’t hard to remember exactly where his sideburns usually stopped--she’d memorized such things about him without realizing it.

When she was finished with that, she set aside the razor and leaned in, giving him a long, experimental kiss, just to see what it felt like to kiss him clean-shaven. It was nice, definitely. Probably, in a few hours, when he had just a slight rasp of stubble, it would be even nicer.

“Okay. Time for bed, I think. Everyone will be up in a few hours.”

Fitz wasn’t oblivious to her, even having just had an orgasm a short while before. He was just too tired to do anything else, no matter how much he wanted to. Even if Jemma claimed she wasn’t counting, he was going to make it up to her, one way or another. He had to hold carefully still while she shaved him because he felt like he could nod off any minute. The soft press of Jemma’s lips, accompanied by the warmth and softness of her naked curves against his body suddenly felt comforting more than arousing.

“Are y’ goin’ t’ stay wi’ me?” Fitz asked softly as they helped each other to their feet and out to dry off. He really didn’t care if he sounded weak or vulnerable - it had been a terrible seven months and he needed her more than he needed his pride at the moment.

“As if anyone could make me leave,” she said. She toweled her hair a bit before buffing off the water, feeling impervious to the chill of the bus, as if the water had heated her skin an inch deep. She pulled her robe back on, reached up with her towel to ruffle the water from Fitz’s hair even as he wound a towel around his waist.

She checked the hall was empty and they shuffled back to her room, where she immediately dropped her robe and reached for a comb, sitting on the side of her unmade bed and nodding Fitz toward the wall-spot he’d vacated earlier. “Climb in,” she said. “I’ve just got to fuss with this mess or it’ll be impossible to untangle in the morning.”

He couldn’t believe that she was so comfortably vulnerable in front of him, casually baring her body to him. Fitz ignored her offer in favor of sliding in behind her on the bed, his legs on either side of her hips, chin on her shoulder. Now that he’d had a little taste of getting to touch her freely, he wanted to take advantage of it. Not to mention, he had seven months of not getting to even text her to make up for, their friendship needing to be reestablished along with this new intimacy.

Fitz plucked the comb out of her hand and straightened from his cuddle to quietly section out some of her hair and gently start detangling it for her.

“Trying to make _me_ sleepy now, are you?” she said, her hands drifting down to his knees on either side of her, trailing softly up and back a little. She shivered when his combing sent little trickles of water down her back. “I wonder how often we can get away with this,” she said. “Showering together. Snuggling back up in one of our rooms. Done it only once, and now I feel like I want to do it all the time.”

He finished combing out her hair, and she held up her left wrist, which always had a hair elastic on it. He knew how to plait hair, had practiced on her some at the Academy, when she’d sprained her wrist and couldn’t put her hair back for lab or field training. He’d grumbled, of course, but she thought he’d secretly enjoyed it. He’d always done a very neat job of it, too.

“O’ course,” he agreed easily, as he slipped the hair tie off her wrist and deftly braided her hair, “I dinna wan’ y’ lyin’ awake watchin’ me sleep.” As soon as he was done, Fitz scooted back to lean against the wall, hands on her waist drawing Jemma along with him. “An’ is no’ a matter o’ gettin’ away wi’ i’. Jemma…” he sighed and wrapped her up completely, an arm around her shoulders, one around her waist, legs tangled with hers, “We’re gettin’ _married_. Th’ hell wi’ wha’ S.H.I.E.L.D. has t’ say abou’ wha’ we ge’ up to.”

She grinned, her cheek against his. “Yeah,” she said. “We are.” She reached down and pulled her quilt up over them, blocking out the chill of the plane, holding in the warmth of them, skin against shower-heated skin. “But I wasn’t really talking about what S.H.I.E.L.D. has to say. I was more thinking of avoiding the teasing from Skye about it. Though. Well. I guess that wouldn’t be too bad. This is nice. I could do this all the time.” She turned her head and kissed his cheek. “Maybe this can be the new Doctor-Who-Watching standard.”

"Naked, cuddly Doctor Who marathons?" Fitz laughed at the idea, "I dinna ha' a problem wi' i', bu' I think Skye migh' be disappointed if she canna join us anymore." They'd gotten the younger woman just as addicted on the show as they were. Fitz' fingers skimmed idly over Jemma's skin, tracing random characters. "I have t' catch up anyway. Havena been watchin' since I lef'," he admitted. He hadn't been able to bring himself to continue with any of their habits - it had been too empty and cold without her there to share them.

“Neither have I,” she admitted. “I couldn’t get past the opening credits without wanting to throw something, and hugging your pillow never helped.” She nuzzled his ear. “And I guess we should be nice and wear something, let Skye join us. But reruns? Off limits.”

"I can work wi' tha'. Besides, is no' like we were no' havin' movie nights an' stayin' up later than everyone else anyway. Will no' be much different. They dinna ha' t' know wha' we're doin' once the door is closed," he pointed out, stifling a yawn halfway through. "We can figure i' ou' later. Coulson migh' surprise us an actually ge' tha' exemption." He paused, sighing. "He's goin' t' kill me for talkin' t' him like tha', isn' he?"

“Probably,” she sighed. “Or he might just be torturing himself about it, which I think is more likely. I doubt he’s going to fault you for any insubordination at this point.” She yawned, carefully turning sideways in his grip, making certain not to hurt him, and slid her arms around his waist, tucking her cheek against his chest. “We should get a bit of rest, though. Real rest.”

He tugged her closer, sliding sideways and taking her with him to sprawl across the bed with Jemma still cradled against him. After a moment of fiddling with the quilt, arranging it over them both and figuring out where limbs could comfortably go, there was finally stillness. Fitz had his chin atop Jemma's head, one arm under her neck with his hand splayed over her back, the other pinned between them clutching her hand. "Now we can jus' hope that no one decides t' wake us up anytime soon."

“The night-night gun is in my bedstand if they do,” she muttered into his clavicle, nosing in close and sighing, the hand not holding onto his tucked beneath her own waist. After months of insomnia and thirty-something hours of exhausting stress, with Fitz wrapped around her warm and real and bare to the skin, she fell asleep almost at once.

~*~

Hours later, Fitz stirred to find himself sleeping on his back, which he almost never did, with Jemma's upper body draped over his, her hair spilling over his chest and her legs twisted awkwardly to one side. It looked terribly uncomfortable, but she was sleeping soundly, breathing slow and even. He let out a quiet breath of surprise and relief. He hadn't dreamed it. He was really back on the Bus, with his Jemma. Reaching up, Fitz indulged himself by slowly tracing his fingers over her face, peaceful in sleep, in gentle, repetitive strokes.

Jemma woke gradually at first, then all at once as she realized who it was lying next to her, actually holding her, his very real fingers grazing her jaw, the curve of her ear, so light they almost tickled. “Fitz?” she murmured, sliding her eyes open to confirm it, though it could be no one else with that scent and those callused fingertips. She was smiling sleepily before she even remembered the evening before, stretching against him, warm and bare and pressed against his skin. His eyes were on her, and when their gazes met, she couldn’t help it.

“Good morning, fiance,” she said, then chuckled, because it sounded strange to call him that, but she needed to say it to believe it. “And welcome home.”

For whatever reason, that moment hit Fitz hard. Her sleepy smile, the casually intimate stretch and snuggle against him, her bare skin pressed warm against his… and the solid confidence in the way she said fiance and welcome home. Like she was almost daring him to question it. His eyes burned and he tipped his head to bury his face against her hair to hide it, because Fitz didn’t want her to think he was upset. Like he’d said to her earlier - he’d spent seven months alone, started thinking of ways to kill himself, and suddenly here everything had been flipped on its head and everything he’d ever wanted handed to him on a silver platter. It was inconceivable.

She understood, of course, because she understood him, could practically hear the thoughts as they passed through his head. She shifted, getting an arm under his neck so she could hold him, shift his face to her collarbone and kiss his temple. She wanted him to feel safe crying if he needed to, wished she could convince him that tears were not a weak response--that they were an overwhelmingly strong response, that vulnerability wasn’t weakness, but a sign of emotional connectedness, something she knew he desperately needed after those long seven months. Half a year and then some, apart.

She stroked his hair with one hand, the other rubbing up and down his too-apparent ribs, forcing herself not to start brainstorming meal-plans to maximize nutritional values just yet. Not that it was a bad idea, in general. The team would probably enjoy it, actually. But right now was not about the team, and it wasn’t about Fitz’s physical health. It was about Fitz--the man in her arms, in her bed, home at last. She cradled him against her, arms tight, and whispered soft nothings into his curls until the hot trickle of tears had stopped and his shaky breathing slowed to match hers, and she could think of nothing more to say besides, “I love you,” over and over, her fingers carding through his hair.

“I love y’, too,” he murmured out, voice thick. “Y’ migh’ ha’ t’ pinch me now an’ then, th’ nex’ few days. I’ doesna feel real ye’.” Fitz tipped his head back to look up at her, his usual small, slightly crooked smile on his face even though his eyes were red and wet. He couldn’t resist touching her, even though it had never been like this, with bare skin and her body laid out against him. His fingertips slid up her spine and back down, “This especially doesna feel real. Do y’ have any idea how long I’ve wanted this?”

“Well, I’ve got a pretty good idea when you realized you did,” she said, stretching a little under his hands and looping her leg around his. “Not quite as certain how long the desire’s actually been there, though, no. Or was that a rhetorical question?” Her fingers spread along the back of his head and she pulled him up for a kiss, loving that she was allowed to do that and...yes, she’d been right.

After a few hours, just enough of the roughness was back on his jaw and upper lip to give a bit of roughness to the kiss that made it approximately twelve times nicer. She hummed against his mouth and dragged his jaw a little closer, sucking a little on his top lip and enjoying the little sparks of happiness crackling down her skin.

This was Fitz. Her Fitz. Home.

“God, Jem,” he murmured against her mouth, his hands following her up his body, unwilling to stop touching her. “I’ve been in love wi’ y’ since th’ beginnin’. Years. Bu’ we both needed a friend more than anythin’ else, so I pu’ i’ aside an’ then you got t’ be too important. I couldn’t risk…” He stopped talking then, because he knew she’d understand. Jemma always did. If it hadn’t worked out, he’d have lost his best friend, his partner, and his love and it hadn’t been worth the risk - then.

Now as an adult, after being separated so long, Fitz knew better. She was worth everything.

She rubbed her thumbs softly behind his ears, nodding even as she pressed back into the kiss. It was a sort of devastating feeling, knowing how long he’d loved her and held back, knowing why and that it had been for nearly identical reasons to hers. Maybe they’d both been too scared to lose each other. And they’d almost lost each other anyway. She was going to make damn sure neither of them were letting go now, and they were going to have rings and laws and documents in as many countries as they needed them to prove it.

Fitz sucked in a breath, letting it out as a quiet, contented sigh. “I wish we could jus’ stay here like this,” he admitted. “Forget all abou’ S.H.I.E.L.D. for awhile. Even jus’ take a vacation. Well, I guess it’d be more of a honeymoon, if we’re gettin’ married.” He’d marry her tomorrow. Hell, he’d marry her right now if it came to that, but he’d be damned if they didn’t get some sort of celebration done the way they wanted rather than rushed because of SHIELD’s stupid rules.

“Well, I think they’ll most likely want to get us both through psych eval, then I’m almost certain at least you will have some medical leave. I probably will too. Well, some of mine might be more along the lines of temporary suspension for assaulting a superior officer. Again.” She twitched her lips into a smile to let him know she was joking. “We’ll have time. We’ll have all the time we need to get this sorted. And yes. To get married. My mum is going to be… intolerable, probably. She’s going to scream. Callum is going to be intolerable.”

“I like your family, bu’... I dinna suppose we can wait t’ tell them until _after_ we’re married?” Fitz asked, a plaintive note in his voice. It wasn’t like he’d never thought of marrying her, but every time it crossed his mind it had always been something very private, just them, like it had always been. Reality was that he’d never had a good relationship with his own parents, and almost no contact with them since being shipped off to school when he was twelve. The idea of wanting his family to be there was foreign to him, but he knew it was important to Jemma. “Ach, nevermin’. Tha’ was a stupid question.”

“Yeah. I’d only try that if you really wanted to find out what it felt like to be eviscerated by a family full of scientists and doctors,” she said. “They’d kill us both. Well. We’d have to tell them, anyway. And at least agree to having some sort of formal...ceremony or something with them. They probably would be okay if we were legally married before that--they know…” she broke off, pressed her face into his shoulder. “They know how hard it’s been, without you. I don’t think they’d be that upset. Or surprised if we just did it. But there would need to be witnesses. Skye. Ward, maybe. I’d say Coulson, only you don’t seem to like him very much right now, and I suppose I understand that.”

Fitz hugged her close when she hid against him, his arms tight around her. “Is okay. I’m no’ goin’ anywhere. Remember the agreemen’? If S.H.I.E.L.D. tries t’ split us up again, we tell them to shove i’ and go ou’ on our own.” His fingers rubbed gently over the back of her neck, reassuring them both. “An’ I can do the family thing if you’re alrigh’ wi’ a private ceremony firs’. I jus… I wan’ somethin’ jus’ for us.”

“Agreed,” she murmured, pressing her lips to his bare shoulder as he rubbed her neck. “We will probably, eventually, when the mood strikes us, have to get out of bed and let the rest of the team know you’re okay. I’m not suggesting right now, though. I think we’ve earned a bit of a lie in.”

“Wha’ time is i’?” Fitz craned his head but was at the wrong angle to see her clock. The window was no help, because even if it was daylight, the shifting timezones were unpredictable. Coulson made them all continue to use Eastern Standard Time regardless of their location, for simplicity’s sake. “I’ was four something this mornin’ when we went t’ bed - it mus’ be late afternoon by now. An’ I think we migh’ get hungry before we’re ready t’ crawl ou’ o’ bed. Are y’ even goin’ t’ let me have solid food yet?”

“I’m sure you can manage something light,” she said, turning to check the clock. “It’s two thirty in the afternoon.” The mention of food had set off a reaction, reminding her brain that it was capable of hunger. Her stomach growled. “Well, then,” she said. “I guess we’re getting dressed and getting food.” She didn’t get up, though. She turned back to him, snuggling against his side and letting one hand slide down his chest where it was cross-hatched with light cuts. “We can come right back here. We don’t have to stay out for long if you’re not ready to deal with other people too much right now.”

Fitz met her hand with his own, twining their fingers together. He had a feeling it would be weeks before he didn’t have this terrible need to have her right there next to him all the time. “No, I think i’ will be alrigh’. I missed them, too. I had gotten used t’ everybody, y’ know?” He tried to explain. “It had really started t’ feel like a team before I lef’, an’ I certainly didna have tha’ working for Victoria Hand.” None of them could or would ever be Jemma, though, but he knew he didn’t need to say that. Jemma knew.

She nodded. “Right. I guess I just sort of… want to have you to myself, I suppose. But of course you missed them too.” She nestled her head above his shoulder on the pillow, poking her nose against his cheek. “I’m going to be quite selfish with you for a while, I think. I’ll try not to be childish about it.”

“ _Jemma_.” The tone was chiding, but there was warmth underneath it. “Y’ know you ge’ firs’ claim on my time an’ attention. Tha’ hasna changed.” He smiled at the press of her nose and would bet that she was wrinkling it, even if he couldn’t see. “If you dinna want t’ deal wi’ the team righ’ now, tha’s fine. We can eat an’ come righ’ back in here. I willna be able t’ sleep again for awhile, I don’ think, bu’ I’m okay wi’ just spendin’ time wi’ you. Y’ know tha’.”

“I know,” she said. “But I also know they’ll want to see you. And they’ll understand if I suddenly drag you back to my bunk like a cavewoman. Which might happen, though I don’t think I’d actually be able to drag you, so you’ll have to help.”

The engineer grinned at the thought, “No, no. I willna make y’ drag me anywhere. Are y’ goin’ t’ cook?” He waited for her affirmative and nodded, “How’s this then? I’ll help y’ wi’ the prep work an’ all an set th’ alarm on my watch when we sit t’ eat’. We’ll say an hour. Tha’s wha’ they can have an’ after tha’ I’m all yours again.”

“Good. I think I can handle that,” she said, and kissed his cheek. “Let me get dressed. I think Skye’s taken your things to your room. Shall I go...find you something to wear?”

His clothes from yesterday were scattered, shredded, bloodstained. She was fairly certain his pants and trousers were in the bathroom hamper. They’d really done a spectacularly poor job concealing anything, though she supposed there wasn’t really a point in concealing it. They were getting married.

“Is i’ still even my room? I though’ for sure they’d assign another engineer t’ the Bus once I was gone,” Fitz said hesitantly. He couldn’t imagine they’d gone without, not with the sort of missions they’d been assigned in the past. “I mean… I could jus’ stay here?” He made it a question, in case Jemma didn’t want them to be quite that obvious.

“Oh, they assigned us some idiot mole of Agent Hand’s. Coulson kicked him out before we left, and all his things are gone,” she said. “But… yes, of course you can stay here. I don’t want to be apart from you more than I have to be. We’ll think of the other room as an extended closet, if it suits you.” She kissed the side of his nose and swung her knees out of bed. A moment later, she was tugging at the top drawer of her dresser, pulling out knickers and stepping into them.

Her back was to Fitz, and she knew he was watching. She was comfortable enough with the idea to let him, and to keep dressing as normal, but part of her couldn’t turn around just yet, couldn’t watch what his reactions were to seeing her standing before him, pulling on clothes. Getting dressed somehow seemed more intimate than getting undressed, as if it reinforced the fact that she’d been naked and pressed against him.

Her mind flashed back to the shower, to what it had felt like to touch him, and she found herself wondering if she’d make it an hour sharing him with everyone else.

It already felt like she was too far away. Not in distance, but a deep, instinctive feeling that getting dressed was like putting a wall back up between them. He knew it was irrational, but then a lot of things he’d thought over the last few months had been like that. Fitz swallowed hard and tried to force his eyes away from her, but it didn’t matter, Jemma was a lodestone, pulling him back to her time and again.

Fitz finally gave in and watched her dress, unaware of the quiet sigh he let out when she was done and hidden away from him.

She glanced back at him when he sighed, noting the slightly forlorn quality to it. Equal parts sympathy and amusement tugged her lips into a smile, and she scanned him up and down, the shape he made under the covers, the slight pout he would deny if she pointed it out. Much as she wanted to think of him as sexy sometimes (and he could be), most of the time he was downright adorable. That worked for her, even if he hated it.

She slid open the narrow drawer that contained her jewelry, tugging out one of the two Mongolian bracelets her father had sent her. It was simple--red cord knotted and connected with a simple lobster clasp. There was a small idol dangling from the side of it, just a silver oval with writing engraved on the back.

“Dad, bless him, got us these a while back, when he was in Mongolia on a dig. I was saving it for Christmas, and I was so flustered when you left that I forgot to give it to you. It’s a friendship bracelet of sorts. There’s apparently a proverb that says ‘true friendship is stronger than stone’. Part of it is on the back of this one,” she held up a blue one. “The other part is on here. It means nothing if they’re not together, apparently.”

She walked back over, sat on the edge of the bed, and crawled over him, straddling his hip over the blankets and reaching for his left wrist. “I’m guessing you want the red one,” she said.

“Red is fine,” he nodded, letting her have his wrist to clasp the bracelet around it. “I didna even ask abou’ Mum and Da. How are they?” Fitz immediately felt guilty - Jemma’s parents had practically adopted him over the years once they’d found out about his own situation at home. It had always been comforting to know that her parents supported their friendship - and had made it very clear that they’d be happy to there to be more than friendship between him and Jemma.

“I canna wear anythin’ tha’ dangles like this while I’m workin’,” Fitz pointed out. “Jus’ my luck it’d ge’ caught on somethin’ and ruined.” He took the blue cord from her and clasped it around Jemma’s wrist, tightening until it fit comfortably snug against her skin. He fiddled with the bracelet, sliding it around so he could see the engraving. “This is fittin’, no?”

“We don’t have rings, so I guess bracelets will do until we can get some. Or make some,” she said. “And I like the sentiment. It is fitting.” She extended her own wrist, handing him the one in blue. “Even if friendship bracelets seem a little juvenile, I like these. They’re a little different. A little special. And I thought maybe we could...take them apart. Add to them a little to make them our own. Or maybe…” she fingered the little pendent where it hung over Fitz’s wrist. “These are silver. What if we…”

She trailed off as the sound of footsteps shuffled past the door and a familiar voice said in a low murmur, “I think they’re up?”

He stilled at the sounds from outside and sighed. “I guess y’ should go find me somethin’ t’ wear.”

“I guess I should,” she agreed, bending forward to kiss him. She kept her eyes open, wanting to watch him, not really wanting to break the eye contact and the perfect bubble of closeness they’d formed. She kissed him twice, then on the cheek, then the eyebrow before she made herself stop and move away, sliding off the bed and slipping out into the hallway.

She glanced into the common area, where Skye stood with May and Coulson, looking wide-eyed and hopeful. “How’s he doing?”

Jemma gave a bit of a shrug. “Worse than I hoped. Not as badly as I’d feared, considering he’s still got enough fight left to be angry.” She avoided looking at Coulson. “He’s going to come out in a bit, just… I need to get him something that isn’t covered in blood and chemicals.”

She took a deep breath, knowing it would be hard for Skye to hear. “Just be careful of touching him right now. He’s jumpy.”

She ducked into his room, which still smelled awfully unlike him, and rooted through the duffel Skye had packed before giving up and slinging the strap over her shoulder. She’d let Fitz decide what he wanted to wear. Give him a bit of autonomy. As weak as he probably felt, he did need to do a few things for himself. He would feel better when he did.

Fitz watched the door warily while Jemma was gone. Even with the lock, he didn’t trust that Skye didn’t know the password and wouldn’t barge in. When it felt like Jemma was taking a bit too long, he found himself snuggling back down into her bed, the sheets tugged up to his neck with his back against the wall. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel safe on the Bus… well, not entirely right now… but surrounding himself with Jemma’s scent - L’air du Temps, the floral scent of the shampoo and body wash she made for herself, and something else that was just Jemma - made him feel more secure in her absence.

She slid the door open to find him huddled back against the wall, buried in her blankets. Pulling the door closed behind her, Jemma dropped the duffel bag onto the floor and tipped herself onto the bed, winding her arms around the blanketed lump of Fitz. “Wake up, Sleepy Dwarf,” she said. “I brought your bag.”

"I'm no' sleepin'," he protested, "Jus'... Is comfortable here an'... Is been a long time since I fel' like I could relax." If he was honest, the thing that was keeping him whole at the moment was Jemma's proposal. She wouldn't have said it if she wasn't serious, and he knew that, even though he'd needed to hear it again.

Fitz sat up halfway and leaned around Jemma to tug his bag onto the bed, rummaging through his meager belongings. He pulled out a thin, worn t-shirt and a pair of faded sweats that had seen better days. His laptop and the triptych tablet were at the bottom and he pulled those out too. "I need t' give these t' Skye, see if she can somehow restore my files. Sitwell and Hand took everythin' personal, especially if I' had anythin' to do wi' you." Meaning all their photos - the silly selfies on missions, goofing off in the boiler room, random candids from other trips and places, were all gone. Jemma had copies of most, but that wasn't the point. He'd had plenty of others she never even knew he'd taken.

“I’ll take them out to her,” she said. “You get dressed. Do you want me to come back, or do you want to walk out on your own?” she asked, deciding to give him the option after all.

“Jem,” he chided her softly, “Dinna baby me too much. I know I’m… a li’l fragile righ’ now, but i’ will be okay. I’ll come ou’ on my own.” He caught her hand and squeezed it before slipping out of the bed to dress himself, hesitating after he’d tugged his pants on. “Tha’ IV, down in th’ lab when I woke up. Wha’ did y’ give me?”

“Variety of things. Norepinephrine at first,” she said. “You were in shock and losing blood. After that, it was mostly just fluids.” She watched as he tugged on trousers. “Ah, your watch. I took it off downstairs,” she said, then stepped forward, putting her hands on his shoulders. They were warm, thinner than they should be. She leaned down, pressing a kiss to his temple. “I’ll see you out there.”

Fitz watched her go before getting the rest of his clothes on, frowning down at himself. Even if he needed to put some weight back on, he didn’t want to wear these clothes any more. They held too many reminders of the past seven months. Perhaps on their next stop in a good sized city he’d get Jemma to go shopping with him. It didn’t quite distract him from the way he felt though. Maybe it was just being with her again, back on the Bus, but he felt stronger, more alert. And for the first time in months he actively felt hungry.

He slipped out of Jemma’s bunk and out to the lounge, quietly taking the seat next to Skye and across from Ward at the counter while Jemma puttered around the kitchen putting a meal together.

They had their dinner, and their reunion, and with everyone back and talking and hugging and abusing Gavin, Jemma actually managed to make it the full hour before her hand found Fitz’s thigh under the table and curved around it, squeezing a little as she pressed the outside of her own leg against his. She glanced at him, leaned in and whispered, noting how Ward and Coulson looked away, while Skye and May looked at each other.

“Do you want to tell them?” she asked.

His eyes cut over to Jemma, the expression in them suddenly panicked. She wanted to tell everyone _now?_ Fitz guessed he could see the point of announcing the news to everyone at once, even if Coulson already knew, but he wasn’t sure he could tolerate that much attention at once. “I… you can tell them,” he whispered back to her. “I’m goin’ to go back to your room.”

Fitz glanced warily at the group assembled at the table and sucked in a deep breath before leaning forward and brushing a reassuring kiss against Jemma’s mouth. He slid out of his seat and started to step away but hands on both his arms made him pause. One, expected, was from Jemma, but Skye’s hold on his other side very much wasn’t.

“Where are you running off to, Wrench-monkey?” The words were light, but the expression on the hacker’s face was anything but.

“Fitz,” Jemma said, her voice gentle. “Sit back down, it’s okay.” She tugged at his arm until he’d sat back down, and she met Skye’s eyes over the table. “Fitz and I have talked, and… pending news on an exemption to Section 17, we may or may not be leaving the bus.” She squeezed Fitz’s arm to let him know that, unless he wanted to, they didn’t have to announce their engagement. He hadn’t even really told her yes in front of Coulson.

Under the edge of the table, Fitz reached to curl his hand over Jemma’s thigh, clinging hard. His face was oddly pale, rather than the blush anyone who knew him might have expected, and had a slight greenish tinge to it that normally only appeared when he was faced with something gory. The team reacted around them, and he was thankful that out of everyone, Skye was the only one prone to talking immediately.

Coulson couldn’t - or wouldn’t - meet his eyes, May’s expression was very faintly approving although he couldn’t be entirely sure with May. Ward’s eyebrows had shot up almost to his hairline, and Skye gasped out, “What? But you can’t just leave!”

“Yeah, actually, we can,” Fitz said quietly. “An’ we will, if SHIELD doesna give us wha’ we want.”

“We’re not giving them a choice, actually,” Jemma confirmed, her hand over Fitz’s, squeezing hard. “They’ll have to either accept us or let us go. We’d like to stay, obviously, but after what happened, we need guarantees.”

Fitz turned his hand over so he could twine his fingers with Jemma’s, a silent comfort to them both, but his expression hardened. “We’ll see wha’ happens. I think I made myself pretty clear las’ nigh’ with wha’ I’m expecting.”

Skye flinched back from the expression on Fitz’ face. He hadn’t looked like that even when Coulson was taken by Centipede and they’d started referring to him as Darth Fitz. Coulson quickly excused himself and May followed, leaving the younger agents circled around the table.

“This canna happen again, Skye,” Fitz said after a long moment of silence, watching their team leader walk out. “I’ wasna jus’ tha’ they split me and Jemma up, but they deliberately isolated me. Ignored signs tha’ I’m unstable. All my communications were monitored an’ censored. They were treatin’ me like some sor’ o’ criminal jus’ t’ keep us apart. I dinna know wha’ the hell Fury was thinkin’, or if he even knew wha’ Hand an’ Sitwell got up t’ once I was off the Bus, bu’ i’ canna happen again. I willna survive it. I nearly didn’ this time.” He sucked in a breath and ducked his head. It all needed to be said, but it was draining to admit it all at once like that.

“One way or another, it won’t,” Jemma said. She ran her thumb up and down Fitz’s, then squeezed. “We’ve decided…” she glanced at him, then back at Ward, May, and Skye. “As soon as we hit UK soil, we’re getting married. Legally, anyway. S.H.I.E.L.D. will have to accept it, or we won’t be getting back on the plane. Dr. Stark offered me a job if I ever needed one, and I’m certain he’d extend the same offer to Fitz. We’d still be tangential to S.H.I.E.L.D., just working in Stark Industries R&D department. It wouldn’t be ideal, but we’d still be doing some good.”

Ward’s eyebrows had shot up, but he mastered his expression almost at once. May looked less than surprised, nodding, her lips tucking in at the corners as if she were torn between smiling and giving the kind of hard look she wore when she was upset about something. Approving of them, upset about the situation, if Jemma were to guess.

“Holy crap,” Skye said. She leaned forward. “But… I mean you guys weren’t… before all this shit happened, you weren’t even together like that. Now you’re getting married? Is it just so they can’t split you up?”

Jemma pressed her lips together. “No. It’s not,” she said firmly. “It would have happened eventually, I think. It just took a long time to… see the forest for the trees, I guess. In a lot of ways, it took being separated before I even realized it was an opportunity that could have been missed. We’ve just been so comfortable as friends for so long, and we were always doing science, and we knew from the get-go that it wasn’t allowed. Honestly, the thought of being together that way just wasn’t on my radar until S.H.I.E.L.D. put it there. And it feels right. You guys have seen me over the past months. I’m not the same without Fitz. Whatever we are, we’re better together. We’re just going to make that official now.”

“With kissing?”

“Well, that,” Jemma said, flushing a little and unable to control the smile that wobbled into existence.

“Not just that,” May added, her voice holding a rare note of humor. “I hope.”

Fitz had let Jemma take the lead in the conversation, quietly blushing as she explained their plan. At least Coulson had left. The engineer blamed the older agent for letting this all happen. He choked on the sip of tea he'd just taken at May's comment, coughing and sputtering in surprise. "Chris', an' here I though' you'd be th' leas' interested in wha's goin' on with us."

“Oh my God,” Skye laughed. “May ships FitzSimmons.”

May’s lip twitched. Jemma, who had started to laugh, rubbed Fitz’s back as he coughed on the tea that had gone down the wrong way. “You’ll forgive us for not sharing details,” she said.

“Uhh,” Skye said, then her expression changed. “Yeah. No. You’re right. I don’t want details.” She made a face. “Gross.”

Ward finally spoke up, “I think you’re right to plan ahead. SHIELD isn’t going to let you cohabitate without forcing their hand. There are other relationships within the organization, mostly in Operations. There are partners who refuse to be split up and have forced Fury to accept that.” A genuine smile creased the specialist’s face. “As far as I’m concerned… Congratulations.”

The engineer really hadn’t been expecting this level of easy acceptance from the team. “I, uh, thanks,” Fitz stammered out.

Jemma squeezed his hand and smiled at the others, but she was starting to feel a little restless. Her leg jiggled a little, and she couldn’t think of much beyond getting Fitz alone again, hunkering down with him and just basking in togetherness a while. No expectations. No need to pay attention to anyone else.

“I ought to get you some more painkillers,” she said, then ran a finger along the edge of a cut going down his arm. “And see to these a little better.”

Fitz shrugged and extricated himself from the group at the table. “They dinna hur’, really, now tha’ I think about i’. Did y’ give me somethin’ for them earlier?” He didn’t remember Jemma sticking him with anything, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have some analgesic ointment or something else she’d concocted. “I hope y’ gave me an antibiotic, though. Some of wha’ I had in tha’ lab I really dinna want infectin’ me.”

“I cleaned them fairly well, if you’ll remember,” she teased, sliding her hand around his wrist, fingers moving over the swell of his thumb muscle and into the dip of his palm. “Don’t worry. I gave you an antibiotic. I’ve got some topical ointments as well, if you want to be certain.”

She pulled him toward the stairs, figuring they ought to at least make a show of going down to the lab.

His cheeks went pink at her comment, Fitz’ mind immediately straying back to their shared shower and sending a rush of heat through him at the memory. “O’ course y’ took care of i’. Wha’ was I thinkin’?” he muttered, letting her twine their hands together and lead him out of the room.

~*~

Down in the lab, Fitz frowned at the reminders of his last time here. No one had touched the room - it had always been off-limits unless he or Jemma were present, and it looked like that rule had been maintained in his absence - but it also meant the gurney, thermal pads and everything else were still cluttering the work benches. Jemma hesitated at the door and Fitz gave her hand a soft squeeze. “We should get this place cleaned up, too. So it feels… normal, again.”

It wasn’t just the scattered supplies and empty IV bags that needed to be disposed of. Some of the equipment had been moved into different places. Fitz guessed they were where the other engineer had preferred them, but he couldn’t understand why. He’d put them back in the proper places and reclaim his work space.

It felt good to work, to get things back where they belonged, where they felt right. Forty five minutes later, they had the lab back in an approximation of how it had been before. Everything wasn’t perfect, of course, but the pulse of the place felt right, as if they had successfully resuscitated a dying patient. More than anything, it felt good to work together, even at something as simple as cleaning. She found her eyes straying down to her bracelet more than once, glancing over occasionally to see the matching one on Fitz’s wrist.

“There,” she said, sliding the last of his bolt-bins back in its proper order. “That looks much better.”

Fitz was kneeling next to the gurney, wrench in hand as he modified the frame to collapse further than intended so they could store it away. As often as Jemma was acting as a doctor and the lack of a proper med bay, at least they’d have something at least moderately more comfortable to put someone on than the cold metal lab surfaces. Being able to easily move someone would be helpful as well.

“Yeah,” he nodded, glancing around at their work. “Is no’ quite righ’ yet, but i’ will be. Needs a bit o’ my clutter hanging about.” Although they never let the lab get dirty, Fitz’ bench usually had random bits of models and half-built motors and such tucked into corners, the occasional half-scribbled design from when his brain got to working faster than he could input an idea into the tablet. He smiled in satisfaction as the gurney lowered another several inches, and replaced the linchpin he’d removed. “There, tha’s better. Is tha’ back corner o’ the storeroom still empty? I’ should be big enou’ for this.”

“Should be,” she said, striding forward to take half the gurney’s weight and help him push it toward the store room. Things were starting to get better. Even if they had to quit, things would get better from here on out, because they would be together. As Fitz took over wedging the gurney more fully into the space, a thought occurred to Jemma. Another rule, which she felt a little tingle of rebellion against. Pressing her lips together, she glanced back at the store room door and pulled it quietly closed, then wedged a very familiar-looking mop handle under the handle and across the frame.

Stepping forward purposefully, she put her hand on Fitz’s shoulder and waited for him to start turning, the barest hint of question entering his eyes before she had rushed up into him, her body breaking like a wave against his as her hands found his jaw and her mouth covered his. She wasn’t strong, and she wasn’t tall, but she had the element of surprise and managed to bend him back a few inches over the collapsed gurney, which rolled into the wall with a clang.

He didn’t even have time to say anything before Jemma’s mouth landed on his. The force of her flinging herself at him put him off balance, and he didn’t just tilt back, he felt himself falling and grabbed for the closest thing, which was Jemma. They both landed across the gurney in a heap. Jemma might not weigh much, but it knocked the wind out of him, leaving his resulting laughter to come out slightly strangled.

“Jesus, Jemma,” he gasped out, tugging at her and urging her up his body. There was another chuckle when he glanced across the room to make sure the door was shut and saw the mop wedged through the handle. “Good thinkin’. No cameras in here, either. Ge’ up here so I can kiss y’ properly.”

“Gladly,” she said, and savored every inch of him that passed against her as she hitched herself higher on his chest and found his mouth, both hands stroking his cheekbones and jaw, tracing his face as she sucked softly at the swell of his lower lip. She barely felt in control of the sinuous movements of her body, rubbing against him in catlike stretches, just to feel the friction of him against her.

It felt good to hear him laugh, better to feel him reaching for her, grinning against her mouth and taking part in the rule-breaking as if they were rebellious kids at the academy, running experiments of a more personal nature in supply closets all over campus. She groaned a little, recalling one tipsy evening when he’d stood behind her in the boiler room, dragged her back against him and sighed as she rubbed back into his hips. She’d felt his heart pounding against her back, his hands bruising on her hips in a way that had made her dizzy with lust. And he’d been hard as hell. If they’d been able to get away, Section 17 would have been a far more necessary possibility. She’d never forgotten the growl he’d given when she’d gotten embarrassed and tried to step a little forward.

It was probably Fitz’s least gentlemanly moment. He’d yanked her back against him with that low warning growl, and a moment later they’d been behind a pillar with her knees hitched up around his hips and her head thrown back against the concrete pillar. He’d bitten her. He’d been drunk and rough and perfect. He’d never stopped apologizing, though she’d soaked completely through her knickers and leggings wanting him, wanting more than they’d been able to get in that not-private-enough setting.

They were in private now, and she was determined not to let that privacy go to waste. Her hands slid down his arms, then back up to his shoulders so she could brace herself, realigning the weight of her movements to her hips.

His arms hitched her closer, bracing a foot on the lower rail of the gurney to push himself the rest of the way up onto the bed and bringing Jemma along with him. It inadvertently pressed her in harder against his hips, and Fitz swore against Jemma’s mouth, sucking in a sharp breath at the frisson of pure pleasure that echoed through him. Fitz latched onto her hips, holding her there, keeping friction where they both desperately wanted it.

Eventually his mouth wandered away from hers, across her jaw to nip at her earlobe, breath rasping into the shell of her ear, and then down onto the soft, sensitive skin of her neck.

She was whimpering, soft, desperate sounds that only lifted in pitch when his breath washed over her neck. Desire flashed through her in sweet, sharp bursts and her movements settled into a rhythm. His hands braced her hips as she rocked herself against him, dragging herself along his thigh and over the swelling heat of his erection. Her fingers went tingly and numb as all her brainpower rerouted to the nerves in her abdomen, and she groaned as he adjusted his hold on her, and the new grip gave her just enough resistance to really get him where she wanted him.

“Oh...bloody hell,” she breathed, grinding into the shocks of pleasure, feeling herself take a leap toward orgasm. So quickly...it was almost embarrassing, but she wanted him so much, and he was perfectly placed. “Oh, god...Fitz… _Fitz_ … Shit.” She heard her breath going sharp, her movements a little erratic as her body started up the soft, butterfly clench of near orgasm. “Fitz, I’m…” She ducked her head a little, keening softly as her face flooded with heat. “Ah, god…”

Fitz didn’t think he’d ever been quite so turned on in his life, not even last night when Jemma had showered with him. He’d never expected that she would be so vocal, the soft whimpers and moans, the tone of her voice lower than usual, even punctuated by those sharp gasps. Even the fact that she was already there, and it was because of him sent a shock of lust over him.

He wanted her closer though, and he let go of Jemma’s hips to hug her against his body, one arm low over her hips and the other over her shoulders. Fitz rocked up harder against her, his foot on the rail giving him leverage still. Groaning into her ear, he pressed soft, frantic kisses against it, down her neck and back, voice low and rough against her skin, “Tha’s it, come on, sweetheart.”

She lost her grip on control, letting the strong roll of his hips carry her over the edge. For several seconds, everything was bright and weightless, and her body was pulsing, grinding down into Fitz as she came in a series of shudders. A cavernous swell opened inside her, and though her muscles still felt half melted around her bones, she had the energy to push up, reach for his belt and wrench it open. It had always been this way with her--external orgasms only made her more desperate for sex, something none of her boyfriends had adequately taken advantage of, in her opinion.

“I don’t plan on stopping this time,” she said against his temple. “Just a warning.”

He was achingly hard and the rub of Jemma’s hand, even through the weight of denim, had him arching toward her touch. Fitz swore when she scrabbled at the zipper, tugging it open. “Shite. Jem. We’re no’ doin’ this without protection, love,” he groaned out. It was the same argument he’d had to point out to her last night, and he hated having to say it, wishing they could just be together and damn the technicalities.

Jemma did some impossible motion with her wrist, wedging her hand into his jeans and closing her fingers around his erection and caution flew to the wind. Fitz rolled out and away, only to return and pin her to the bed. He quickly stripped her clothes away, tugging Jemma’s jeans and knickers off together. It seemed like she was naked against him in moments, the lust only increasing when he realized she was trying to work on his shirt at the same time. He didn’t even care that much about himself, shoving his pants down enough to let him rut against her, teasing them both.

Jemma gave a sharp gasp as he moved against her, and she knew a brief moment of guilt for pushing him despite his words about protection, but it was gone the next instant, as she wound her legs around his and he settled into the cradle of her hips. She palmed down his sides with one hand, the other working at the buttons of his shirt.

She clearly wanted them both naked, and Fitz finally gave in, pulling back again to strip off whatever clothes were left on the both of them before toppling back down over her. He set his teeth into her shoulder, nipping sharply as he settled into the cradle of her thighs again. The slick slide of his erection through her folds was torture, the heat of her feeling like it was almost enough to burn, especially combined with the pleasure of skin against skin everywhere else they touched. The faint stings from the cuts scattered over Fitz’ body weren’t nearly enough to distract him from Jemma writhing against him.

His teeth drew a sharp gasp, and her hands flew up to frame his hips, ensuring he went where she wanted him. His pelvic bones fitted into the dip of her palms, and the hardness of his shaft dragged along her labia, teasing, pressing down and sliding against her oversensitive clit, sending a spasm down her legs and a harsher, more desperate cry from her throat. She felt her face contorting in the mixed pain and pleasure, pelvis jumping up against his as her hands pushed his hips lower. She writhed under his hands, her chest pressing up into him as she fought for breath, moving so the slide of him through her folds dragged his head lower with each slow rock.

The heat they were generating was incredible, clouding up around them and melting deep into her bones. She felt her muscles loose and warm, her skin slick with sweat, yet still burned by his. And the smell of them...it could have sent her into a frenzy all by itself. They were dense and earthy and intoxicating, musk and hormones, sweat, sex, and skin. Hints of their combined perfumes remained on the gurney, but she only caught them in flashes, when she turned her head and keened at the intensity of his movements over her.

Jemma arched beneath him, and the angle shifted them both just enough that his next rock pushed him inside of her. Fitz went with it, letting his motion and hers carry them until his hips were pressed in tight against hers. He swore against her skin, muscles trembling from the flash of mind-numbing pleasure as she closed around him. Sex almost always felt good, but knowing it was Jemma beneath him did something to him.

Fitz slid a hand under her shoulder, curling his fingers up and over, pulling her into him while he ground against her, teasing them both with the faint motion of his hips.

“Ohh, hell,” she growled, bucking softly with his movements to intensify the sensations rippling through her. He filled her, pressed her out and open, deeper than his fingers and with more power behind even the tiny motions as his abs clenched for each tiny circle. She whimpered again as his fingers clenched into her shoulder and he circled deeper, opening her up in a way that had her legs sliding open, hooking over the metal rungs of the gurney to give him full access. Her toes tucked under the bars, anchoring her. “Fitz, Jesus Christ, Fitz,” she whimpered as he continued the deep, teasing grind. She was already tight, but he was making her clench hard around him, bearing down to make the small movements more intense.

He slipped in just that little bit further when her thighs came up to bracket his hips, and a guttural moan echoed up from low in Fitz’ chest. “Fuck, Jem, do tha’ again.” He nearly whimpered out as she squeezed around him a second time. Drawing back, his breath shuddered at the wet slide of his cock inside of her, muscles trembling. Fitz set his mouth against the upper curve of Jemma’s breast and thrust back in, the first few slow and deliberate, not to tease, but to make sure she was comfortable with what he was doing.

Even as his mouth found her nipple, his tongue tracing a damp path over it that he then washed over with a gasp of warm breath, his eyes were cast up, watching Jemma’s face.

Her hand was caught in his hair, curved around the back of his neck, and though her eyes had been squeezed shut to help her focus on the physical senses, she felt his head tilt to look up at her, even as his tongue and his slightly-rough chin caressed her. She tensed at the network of signals her nerves transmitted, opened her eyes and looked down at him, and met the brightness of blue-green in his eyes. All the tension seemed to drain from her arms and legs, and a thought rang deep and resounding in the back of her head--they were going to be together for the rest of their lives. This would happen again. And again. And it would only get better as they learned each other, sweeter as the pain of the past seven months faded.

He sank into her again, this thrust a little deeper than the last, hitting her square in a nerve-dense area. She lost his gaze, head tipping back into the gurney as she let out a soft, choked cry, her toes slipping a little on the railing of the gurney. “There, God…” she hissed, nails digging a little into his shoulder. His breath on her nipple was a secondary point of heat. She clenched on him again, wanting to hear the groan, hoping to keep him this fired up.

He had wanted an answer and that was enough of one for Fitz. His eyes met hers and there was nothing there that said no and everything saying yes.

His fingers tightened around her shoulder, his focus leaving her face as his eyes slipped shut. He picked up the pace, his thrusts steady and driving as his breathing sped up as well. Little involuntary sounds spilled from Fitz as he kissed his way up to her collarbone and nipped her - perhaps not as gently as he could have, his teeth scoring a line against her delicate skin. Fitz tongued away the sting, though, before replacing it with the pressure of his mouth sucking a mark in the same place.

"Jemma," he muttered between moans. Fitz didn't have to say anything else, his tone did it for him. Now he understood why people said it was different when you were with someone you loved. All the physical sensation merged with the emotional and mental and even his overactive brain narrowed and focused solely on her. His free hand rose to cup her jaw, turning her to meet his lips as he lifted to reach hers.

She caught his kiss, but couldn’t hold it as her vocalizations became harder to deny, and she found herself making breathy, rhythmic cries into his mouth as he drove her higher. The thrusts had forced her a little higher onto the gurney, and she felt her head pressing against the top rail. She hooked her toes tighter into the rail on one side and released the other, winding it up around Fitz’s thigh, where she could feel him moving, the slide of his hip against the inside of her thigh as his thrusts grew shorter, harder, more desperate. It brought him against that spot again, and she must have reacted somehow, spasmed and clenched each time, because he was grunting his own pleasure at a moment’s delay. “Fitz, there. Yes, oh, fuck...Shit...shit,” she breathed, and her voice slid low as the next few thrusts sent her floating on a swell of pleasure, and she felt her face contorting a little, her brow knotting at the force of sensation. He’d brought her right up to the edge of orgasm, but she resisted, pressing it back, wanting to wait for him, or let it last a bit longer.

Fitz wasn’t ready for this to be over yet, either. Stilling his movements inside her, Fitz panted against Jemma’s shoulder for a moment before carefully lifting and cradling her, turning to sit on the gurney with her in his lap. He let out a soft moan, nipping at Jemma’s skin when he slipped out of her in the process. Distracted by the press of her body, he fumbled trying to raise the headrest, but he managed eventually and slid back to lean against it with Jemma in his lap.

He shot her a mischievous grin, lifting his hips and rubbing his cock against her like he’d done before. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew they’d been in this storeroom too long already and someone was likely to come looking for them, but Fitz found that he didn’t care. He’d already practically dared Coulson to fire him. All he wanted right now was Jemma wrapped around him… again, finally.

She didn’t think anyone would be dumb enough to come looking for them. After what they’d told them, the disappearance into the storeroom with a bed-like object was a fairly dead-on giveaway about what was happening. She returned his grin a bit, her expression flickering as he rubbed against her, stirring up some of the pleasure that had left her shaking in his arms, hot and aching for release. Still, she was firm with her self-control. He’d managed to pick up on her desire to extend the experience somehow, or maybe he’d just thought the same thing--shock--and done something to help them both last. She settled in his lap, winding her legs around his hips and pressing her naked chest forward into him.

His hands felt good on her back, warm and wide under her shoulder blades, keeping her tight against him as he moved. She tipped her forehead against his and held it there, looking at his bright eyes as she wound her arms around his shoulders and moved with him. Her Fitz. Finally.

Urging her up, Fitz let go of Jemma long enough to guide himself back in, letting her settle against him and set the pace this time. His hands drifted up to cup her jaw, holding her in place for his kisses. First they were just soft brushes of his mouth, but after a few moments he dove into her again, lips and tongue and teeth working together against her, and his hands moved again to tease his calluses against her skin.

He was bound and determined to please her as much as he could and was willing to play a little dirty to that end.

She shuddered as she settled onto him, his cock sliding hot back into her and filling the aching openness with tight heat. She moved just a little at first, humming softly as the movements stirred at her sensitized zones. She had to move slowly, draw off him a bit to keep from tipping herself over the edge too fast. So, for a few moments, she was lifted on her knees, swiveling gently as she sank halfway down him and lifted up again.

But he was kissing her, and it was sweet and lovely, and she was starting to relax into a place where she could just keep going, turned on and teasing both of them with shuddering glimpses of orgasm, until his grip tightened. Suddenly, he wasn’t just kissing her--he was unleashing himself on her, kissing and touching like there was nothing else in the world but to devour her skin with his hands, his mouth with hers. She shuddered, her movements becoming harsher, thrusting herself onto him deeper.

The shudder was accompanied by a noise Fitz didn’t think Jemma was even aware she’d made. He drew back to search her face, concerned. “Too much?” he asked softly, his breath made uneven by her movements against him. Fitz didn’t really wait for the answer, but eased his next kisses back so they weren’t quite so uncontrolled. He was torn between his arousal demanding an orgasm and his emotions wanting to stay like this as long as possible.

She whimpered a little, sinking fully onto him and stilling but for a slight, gentle grind as his kisses softened. It moved him inside her just enough to make her twinge, the occasional soft clench of a small orgasm--not the ones that shattered her, but the tiny, shocking ones that were more like warning shocks than the quake itself--setting her to open-mouthed silence as he kissed her. But then she would relax again, sink her mouth into his, and ride until the next soft shock hit her.

She’d found a zone she could stay in, a place she wanted to remain indefinitely, though her muscles were burning from the exhaustion. “Wish we’d...done this at the...academy, or Sci-Ops,” she managed. “Could have ticked off...my cardio requirement.”

A little smile quirked his mouth, “Maybe we’d have managed t’ pass our field assessments if exercisin’ had fel’ like this.” His fingers found her hips, urging her to move more, supporting the muscles in Jemma’s thighs so she wasn’t doing all the work. He could tell she was getting tired though, her muscles trembling with arousal and the unexpected workout. Hell, they’d probably both be sore after this and they hadn’t even been that rough.

The flutter of Jemma’s muscles around his cock had him ready to go at any time, the soft tease of them keeping him on a quiet edge. He debated switching positions again, but settled on something else, letting Jemma settle back into that gentle grind she’d seemed to like so much. His hand slipped around her hip and down between them to run his thumb softly against her clit.

She hummed softly into his mouth, goosebumps rushing down her arms as the roll of her hips was interrupted by the need to press herself into that touch. She nipped softly at his lip, legs trembling, felt herself starting to tighten, the ripple in her belly stronger than before. She keened softly, movements more pronounced as she decided she wanted to come, wanted to fall shattering over the edge with him holding onto her like this. “Fitz,” she whispered, then reached down for his hand, pulling it around to her hips to mirror the other. Her hands slid up his arms, locking behind his neck and forced her tired muscles to work just a little longer, driving her higher.

Fitz kept moving, gentle rocks of his hips, his thumb rubbing in tight circles, warm and steady as she moved over him. His fingers were all splayed over her hips, calluses skimming against her skin, one more sensation to add to the rest of them. He didn’t want to let go to pull her down to him, but he wanted her kisses, too. “C’mere,” he coaxed her forward. “Kiss me.”

She dragged herself from the intoxication of the feeling enough to comply, closing her mouth over his and bracing her thumbs along his cheekbones. It was warm, it was affection and desire, passion and sweetness all together as she wound slowly up, the coiled knot inside her going tighter and tighter until, with a surge of warmth and wetness, all the knots spilled, and she rocked down onto him. She let out a breathy, sweet note as he thrust softly into her orgasm, taking advantage of the contraction of her passage to make the sensations more pronounced.

He gathered her close once she tipped over the edge, his arms wrapped snug around her back. Fitz braced her as he lifted his hips and rocked in, drawing out her orgasm and falling messily into his own. Nipping at Jemma’s lower lip, he came in gentle shudders, the physical reaction to such a slow, quiet orgasm seeming so much different to any other time. Or maybe it was just Jemma’s effect on him. Fitz had no objection to experimenting and finding out.

Drawing in uneven breaths, he rubbed his hands lightly up Jemma’s back and down again, soothing her as she trembled in his arms. Fitz nuzzled gently against her ear, whispering, “I love you, Jem.”

It took her a long time to catch her breath, and to process the words he’d said, though she was already whispering them back to him, pressing kisses along his shoulder, winding sinuously around him and holding on until they were both calmer. She drew back a bit, her damp skin peeling away from his, and kissed his jaw on her way back. Her heart was still bounding in her chest like a hare, pulse thudding against her throat as she swallowed, and spoke. “I suppose we ought to...clean up and… go back upstairs. Jesus, Fitz.”

He wasn’t ready for her to go just yet. “We’ve already been missed, I’m sure. Just… stay. For a minute?” Fitz’ arms tightened around her, voice and expression vulnerable now. He’d just spent seven months without Jemma, and finally, finally got to make love to her. He wasn’t ready to face the rest of the team again after that.

She nodded, sensing his need for her care right now, and wound her arms around his shoulders, fingers threading into his dense curls. “Just think,” she said. “No one can stop us if we want to do this again. Because we’ll be married. I mean, as long as we don’t make a habit of shagging in the supply closet, I can’t see it being a problem.”

“I wonder what’s th’ official policy on givin’ birth control t’ female agents?” Fitz asked softly. He’d mentioned protection earlier, but he’d needed her more than he’d needed to be safe and he felt a ping of regret. Hopefully there wouldn’t be any… complications… because of that particular lapse in judgment. They’d already gone through too much and still had too much to figure out to face that just yet.

“We have it,” she said. “It would be stupid not to, given the kinds of situations some female agents find themselves in. For example, I know Romanoff has slept with a target. She told me and Skye. I imagine S.H.I.E.L.D. wouldn’t make her pay for her own birth control for that. And yes. I’ve been on it since the Academy. We got it whether we needed it or not. It’s just good to be prepared. Did they not… mention anything to the boys at the Academy?” she asked, fingers trickling over his collarbone and down his chest.

Fitz shook his head, immensely relieved. “No. Tha’ was probably deliberate, so all th’ horny, hormonal boys wouldn’t automatically assume y’ were fair game t’ be harassed without consequences.” It wouldn’t be surprising. He’d never been quite so ashamed of his gender as he’d been hearing the boastful, crude conversations in the communal bathrooms in the mens’ dorms.

“You’d think most of the twenty and thirty-something cadets would be over that sort of thing,” she said. “From what I remember, you were the only teenage boy at all. As for horny and hormonal, well. I can only assume.” She kissed him on the nose. “But I bet you were too.” She kissed him on the nose again.

He blushed faintly. “Yes, bu’ I was never so rude abou’ i’. The things tha’ used t’ be said in the dorms were terrible,” Fitz admitted. “I’ was like they kept score of who they’d had sex with, and let’s no’ even talk abou’ the dirty fantasies o’ wha’ they wanted t’ do with who. Most o’ it… forcibly done if they’d had their way.” He shook his head clear of the memory and returned his attention to her, walking kisses from her forehead and down Jemma’s nose, eventually reaching her mouth.

“You’ll have t’ forgive me,” he whispered. “I think is goin’ to be awhile before I’m no so… clingy.”

“I don’t mind clingy,” she said, her eyes closed under the attention of his kisses. “Not right at the moment. I am, however, getting a bit cold. We could finish cleaning up and...then go back to bed. No harm in lingering a while.”

Fitz nodded. “Alrigh’.” He wouldn’t argue if she was cold - it was always chilly on the Bus, and other than their clothes, there was nothing else down here to cover up with. He shifted to sit up properly, bringing Jemma with him. If he was being honest, he was letting Jemma anchor him, because otherwise he felt like he might float away - or wake from this dream.

 

~*~

It took four days for them to land in a country with a British Embassy that had the appropriate official, and Jemma didn’t want to wait. She asked Skye to witness, and Ward, and kissed Fitz in the doorway of his bunk until he agreed to go in and let her pick out something for him to wear. She thought he might only have acquiesced because she told him he could pick from her dresses which one she’d wear.

“I’ve always liked you in turquoise,” she said, tossing the dress shirt to him. “We don’t need to go very fancy. Just this, some nice trousers. You can even wear your trainers if you like,” she said, toeing over his gym shoes.

Fitz knew better than to argue - most of his outfits were the result of Jemma’s influence anyway. He didn’t know a thing about mixing patterns, but she was always suggesting things for him to try beyond his usual button up and tie with a jumper. She’d offered to let him pick her dress and he already knew which one he wanted. “Fine, le’ me ge’ dressed then. You go find tha’ blue dress. The dark one with th’ purple an’ white flowers.”

She left him to get ready, pulling the dress out of her meager closet and frowning a little at the wrinkles. It needed pressing. She sighed and walked out of her room, intending to head to the small laundry area in the rear of the bus, and ran into Skye, who was brushing her teeth, wearing a cute periwinkle blue babydoll dress with her hair still half up, half in curls. “MMmm!” Skye said, pointing at Simmons’s dress. “Mmh!” She gave her a thumbs up, then pointed to her own dress. “Mmh?”

“Yes, that’s fine,” Jemma said. “I’ve just got to get the wrinkles out of-” she turned straight around into May, who plucked the dress from her hand.

“I’ll do it,” the older woman said, her expression neutral, but her voice a bit lighter than usual. “Get ready. It’s not a big ceremony, but it’s a big ‘fuck you’ to Section 17. Look good.”

Jemma swallowed, her mouth twitching a little into a smile. She nodded.

“Mmmmmmh!” Skye intoned, waving her over and brandishing her curling iron.

Fitz didn’t have to do much other than get dressed - and dig a pair of dress shoes out of the bottom of his closet. He wasn’t going to wear his trainers to his own wedding. He also belatedly wrangled his curls into submission, before wandering out to find his fiancee.

Skye had insisted on being the one to curl Jemma’s hair, then pin it up with a few small flower-tipped bobby-pins as Jemma applied a little bit of makeup--nothing heavy, just a step up from her every-day. May returned with the dress and zipped her up, handing her a small box. “Something old,” she said, reaching to take the lid off.

A delicate chain suspended a disc of silver, pocked and hammered to look like the surface of the moon, and a small crescent of diamonds glittered up one side. “It was my mother’s. She’d be happy to see someone wearing it at a wedding.”

Jemma opened her mouth to speak, but couldn’t quite get the words out as May lifted the necklace and put it on. “Take care of it. If I don’t wear it to my grave, she’ll kill me in heaven.”

Jemma laughed, but caught Skye’s eye, and the girl was looking introspective. “That means you need something new and something borrowed. Your dress is blue. Give me a sec!” She darted from the room.

She nearly took Fitz out as he came down the hall to find Jemma, “Chris’ Skye,” he laughed, grabbing her by both arms to keep them both from falling. “Slow down, we’ve still go’ time before we have t’ leave.” He let her continue on her way and glanced over to where Jemma was hovering in the doorway of Skye’s room, and his entire expression went soft. “You’re beautiful,” he said softly.

“Ugh, don’t,” Jemma said, her hands going to her face. “You know I can’t take compliments. Just,” she waved a hand. “Just come here a sec,” she said, and stepped forward to smooth nonexistent wrinkles from his shirt. “So, May gave me the moon,” she murmured, looking up at him and trying not to get sucked into his gaze, because for a second she felt like she was floating a few inches above the ground. “Well. It’s on lend. It’s my something old.”

“And here’s your something borrowed,” Ward said from behind Fitz, tossing a white bowtie over the shorter man’s shoulder. “I trust you can tie it yourself?”

Skye caught up to them. “I think Coulson has your something new,” she panted. Even if no one else noticed Fitz’s reaction to that, Jemma did, and pressed her hands a little harder into his chest before reaching up to fix his bow tie. “Well, luckily, he doesn’t have to do it himself,” she said, catching sight of Coulson striding toward them, his face unreadable. He came around from behind Fitz and looked at them both, reaching out to clasp each of their shoulders.

“I know,” he began, then paused for a beat. “I know I messed up. And I should have done more to protect you--both of you. There’s nothing I can do that will ever make up for it, or repair the trust I broke. I’m not officially allowed to condone going behind S.H.I.E.L.D. for this, because if I have any chance of protecting you guys in the future, and of keeping you on this team, I can’t give anyone an excuse to discredit me for, say, being a witness on your license.” He pulled something slender and shiny--a gold-tipped, milky mother-of-pearl fountain pen--from his pocket, and extended it to Fitz. “I can, however, give you the pen to sign it. It’s new. Custom made. Maybe not conventional by way of a wedding gift, but consider it my vote of support.”

“Thank you, sir,” Jemma whispered, flicking her eyes up to Fitz to see what his reaction would be.

Fitz hadn’t spoken an unnecessary word to Coulson since the scene in the older agent’s office, and despite Jemma’s pleading glance before Coulson stepped up and the pressure of her hands on his chest, there was a part of him that really didn’t want to accept the gesture. He honestly believed Coulson could have done more while he was gone. Surely he’d seen how Jemma had reacted to his absence from the Bus.

He still wasn’t sure if Coulson could or would protect them in the future, even though he felt like he and Jemma had more than proven their usefulness to SHIELD as a working partnership.

After a long moment, he took the pen. “Thank you, sir.”

There was still a faint hesitation before he could bring himself to say ‘sir’, but hopefully it went mostly unnoticed. His shaken faith in their supervising officer was something Fitz needed to work out on his own.

“And you’re wearing blue. We’re done!” Skye said, breaking the tension. “Old, new, borrowed, blue. Time to hit the road.”

Jemma felt a slight swoop of nerves, but stepped back from Fitz, her hands sliding down to find his and tighten around them. She inhaled, reached for the bags where she had all of the documentation for her and Fitz put together--a folder they needed to present at the Embassy for the marriage license, with forms already filled out--and the Change of Status forms she’d filled out for the both of them. For Fitz, it had been easy: she merely circled the box where his marital status indicated ‘single’ and ticked the box for ‘married’. Hers had not been so simple. As well as updating her marital status, she’d filled out the Change of Name form, indicating her new name would read Jemma Catherine Fitz.

And so they would inform S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Parisian branch by post of their marriage, and wait for the other shoe to drop.

The next hour was something of a blur, and looking back on it later, all Fitz would remember was Jemma’s hand in his on the drive into the city, the warmth of her curled into his side. At least, until they stepped before the officiant - that part was crystal clear, the vows and the expression on Jemma’s face burned into his memory. The past four days they’d still been careful of being too affectionate in front of the team, but with the deed done, Fitz didn’t hesitate even an instant before thoroughly kissing his wife.

The team clapped, and a few people at the Embassy congratulated them. Skye, who had spent the entire “ceremony” grinning and taking pictures and video (when she wasn’t struggling to make the fountain pen work), waited until they’d taken a breathless step apart before tossing her arms around them both.

“The FitzSimmonses! Or Fitzezes. Whatever!” She cheered.

“And even though this isn’t the actual ceremony,” Ward said. “We do fully intend to take the two of you out for dinner. I’m familiar with the area, so just answer this: A, B, or C.”

Fitz laughed softly when he and Jemma both answered B at the same time without hesitation. He had a more pressing question for her, spurred by Skye’s comment. “Which name did y’ pick?” he asked Jemma softly, not wanting the team to know it had been a question. Jemma’s doctorates and professional reputation were attached to the name Simmons and he’d been perfectly okay for her to hyphenate the name, or for them both to change to FitzSimmons, but he’d eventually left the choice to her.

“I thought there was a nice ring to Jemma Catherine Fitz,” she murmured back, smiling up at him. Or, smirking, rather, because she knew he would have been happy with anything, but would appreciate the symbolic gesture as much as she did. She wanted there to be no question they were married. No question to whom she had given herself forever. “Which reminds me,” she pulled out the sealed document envelope and handed it to Fitz. “Would you like to do the honors of dropping this in the mail to S.H.I.E.L.D.?” she asked, nodding toward a postbox.

Skye cackled, and May’s smirk was positively feral.

She was right. He did appreciate the gesture. Even though he’d assured her he had no attachment to the name Fitz - which was the truth - Fitz was possessive enough that he liked the open declaration that she was his.

At her words, he glanced down at the envelope, confused until he realized she’d brought all the paperwork with her, not just what they needed for the wedding. His mouth spread into a mischievous grin. “Oh, I would be more than happy t’, Mrs. Fitz.” he laughed, taking the envelope and marching over to the box. He dropped it in and let the grate close behind the envelope with a satisfying clang of metal. “I wonder how long i’ will take before we ge’ ordered back t’ the Hub t’ explain ourselves?”

“I give it three days,” May said.

“Parisian post system,” Ward said. “I’d give it at least a week.”

“Parisian post system plus SHIELD bureaucracy,” Fitz smirked. “But no more than two weeks. I think i’ will depend on if whoever opens i’ recognizes our names.”

“Oh, I hope it’s Victoria Hand,” Jemma said, a note of malicious glee in her voice. “Not that she would be opening mail, but I hope it gets to her personally.”

“I could-” Skye started, before Coulson, May, and Ward all interrupted with a simultaneous “No!”

Ward found them a ludicrously expensive restaurant, and no one complained too much when Coulson billed it as an expense to S.H.I.E.L.D. “I think this counts under the agent wellbeing clause,” he said. “Just in case, I drew cash.”

May’s dark eyes slid sideways, and she smirked, then went back to her creme brulee, cracking the top with a sharp tick of the side of her spoon.

“And this is on me,” Ward said as the sommelier approached with a bottle of Moet the specialist had ordered in French. “Congratulations, guys. I mean it. And thanks for making it easier for idiot specialists like me not having to memorize more than one name.” He looked at Jemma. “Do we still call you Simmons, or…”

She grinned. “I’ll answer to it. But I think it’s about time most of you started calling me Jemma anyway. Don’t think I’ll to anything but look at Fitz when someone says Fitz. Damn,” she looked at Fitz and wrinkled her nose. “It would be weird if I started calling you Leo, like my mum, wouldn’t it. Eh.”

“Leopold,” Skye said. “Little lion monkey.”

“Monkeylion,” Jemma corrected, giving Fitz a mischievous look. “He’s saved as that in my phone. Has been since the academy.”

Fitz sighed, “Did y’ have to tell Skye tha’?” He looked over at the hacker with a stern expression, “Dinna even think abou’ i’.” The engineer already knew the odds of Skye forgetting the nickname or never using it were absolutely null. Privately, he thought it would be odd if Jemma started calling him Leo now too. Right now she only used it when they were alone, and only on times when she really wanted or needed his attention. He was okay with that.

“On the other hand,” Skye said. “You could both be adorably disgusting and always just address each other as Mr. Fitz or Mrs. Fitz. Like a sitcom.”

“Technically, it’s Dr. Fitz and Dr. Fitz,” Jemma said. “So that really doesn’t help at all. Oh,” she looked over at Fitz, her face arrested. “Damn, I forgot the papers I was going to send to get my PhDs changed over. Well. “

“Fitz Squared,” the engineer put in, chuckling at the idea. “It’s even a syllable shorter than FitzSimmons” He frowned when he caught Jemma’s shifting expression. “Tha’s goin’ t’ take forever anyway, isn’ i’? One more day willna matter.” He laid a hand over her thigh, palm up for her to twine their hands together under the table. Fitz didn’t want her to have any reason to be sad, not today.

May changed the subject as the sommelier finished pouring the champagne and retreated, leaving bottle on ice there at the table. “So, who’s going to make the first toast to our newlyweds?”

Jemma’s free hand went to her cheek, her other hand clenching in Fitz’s. “Don’t,” she pleaded. “Oh, God…”

“You don’t get that option,” Coulson said.

“I’ll do it,” Ward said, clearing his throat and standing. To Jemma’s horror, he picked up his dessert spoon and tapped his champagne glass, nodding to the waiters who approached the rest of the tables with champagne, slowly gathering the attention of the other diners.

“ _Excusez-moi, mesdames et messieurs. Je m'excuse de perturber votre soirée, mais ce soir, je suis honoré de faire partie d'une célébration pour deux personnes très spéciales: mes amis, Léopold Fitz et Jemma Fitz née Simmons._ ”

“Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen. I apologize for disrupting your evening, but tonight I am honored to be part of a celebration for two very special people: my friends, Leopold Fitz and Jemma Fitz née Simmons,” Jemma translated for Fitz, Skye, and May’s benefit. She suspected Coulson already knew French.

“ _Je n'ai jamais cru sept était un nombre chanceux, mais il ya sept ans, ils rencontré dans la formation de notre société. Il ya sept mois, ils ont été séparés sur réaffectation. Il ya sept jours, ils ont été réunis et engagés. Et aujourd'hui, à sept heures du soir, ils étaient mariés. Tout cela grâce à une petite chose appelée l'article 17, qui a essayé et échoué à les séparer._ ”

“I never believed seven was a lucky number, but seven years ago, they met in training for our company. Seven months ago, they were separated on reassignment. Seven days ago, they were reunited and engaged. And today, at seven in the evening, they were married. All thanks to a little thing called Section 17, which tried and failed to keep them apart.”

“ _S'il vous plaît joindre à moi pour féliciter le nouveau couple, Monsieur et Madame Fitz, qui pas de chance, bonne ou mauvaise, pourrait séparer._ ”

“Please join me in congratulating the new couple, Mister and Misses Fitz, who no luck, good or bad, could separate.” She finished translating, her eyes stinging as Ward lifted his glass.

“ _Santé!_ ”

And the other diners, some of them smiling, some of them looking a little confused or long-suffering, lifted their glasses and echoed the cheer, and everyone drank.

“Thank you,” Jemma mouthed over the table at Ward, barely able to swallow her champagne for the knot in her throat, which was almost as tight as her grip on Fitz’s hand.

“So…” Skye whispered as Ward sat down. “How long did you spend practicing that one in the mirror?”

“And none of us are going to manage to top that,” May smirked, but there was also an unmistakable note of pride in her voice. Ward had surprised the hell out of her. “So you’ll only get the one toast, I think.”

Fitz didn’t even know what to say, stunned by the other agent’s sincerity.

It seemed impossible that seven days ago, he’d been ready to die than go on the way he’d been, and now he was here. Married to Jemma. Surrounded by a team he’d never expected to be so invested in. Sure, there were still things that needed to be worked out. Namely his concerns about Coulson and how SHIELD would respond to the news of their marriage, but for now… Life was pretty damned good.

 

~*~

**Seven Days Later**

In the spirit of transparency, Coulson had put Director Fury on speaker. Not that he would have needed to, as loudly as the esteemed Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. was shouting.

“...behind your back, behind my back, and got motherfucking married with witnesses on your team and both of them with pending insubordination cases from Agent Hand. The hell were you thinking, letting this happen on your watch? The rules are there for a reason, and that reason is not for your team of specialist snowflakes to run amok all over my goddamned operation. I don’t care how adorable the wedding picture was. My balls are strangled in all the fucking red tape I’ve got to untangle to keep your motherfucking team from being taken apart and sent to motherfucking Siberia. The only things that are keeping your nostrils above water is the surveillance tapes of the kid, Sitwell’s testimonial, and the fact that there’s a very strongly worded letter from Tony Stark on my desk threatening to put them at the head of his R&D department and ain’t nobody got time for that.”

Skye, being the consummately nosy hacker she was, had been eavesdropping as soon as she realized who Coulson was on the phone with, and when FitzSim- Fitz and Fitz, she reminded herself - came down the hall, she waved them forward, all three of them standing there in stunned silence at the Director’s rant.

“Bloody hell. Jemma. Tony Stark! Can y’ imagine?!” Fitz’ face lit at the thought of running Stark Industries’ R&D group.

“Yes. And I’m certain that’s exactly what Director Fury is imagining as well--us, with access to Stark Industries’ budget and unlimited minions,” she said. “I’ll have to send Dr. Stark a thank you text and ask if the offer will stay open, just in case.”

Fitz nodded rapidly. If they had to leave SHIELD, there would be no better place for them to go. Stark was a known quantity, and known for brilliant ideas, unlimited funding, and a fuck off attitude. They’d be able to approach him with almost anything and the billionaire would go for it if they thought it was feasible. They could probably even still travel - Stark Industries was a global conglomeration, with offices all over the world.

He stilled and stared at his wife. “Y’ have Tony Stark’s phone number?”

“Dug a bullet out of him in New York,” she said. “Five months ago. You know. Second invasion. Believe it or not, he asked me to join the company then. Of course, I thought it was the blood loss and epinephrine talking, but apparently he was serious.” She neglected to mention the part where he’d also asked her to dinner. And to tour his lab. Fitz hero-worshipped the bloke, and she had the feeling knowing that wouldn’t endear him.

Luckily, Tony seemed to have taken the news with the same enthusiasm as anything, even sending her a congratulatory note and telling her to look out for a ridiculously extravagant wedding gift.

“An’ y’ didn’t think to tell me tha?” Fitz sputtered out. “I canna believe i’. Y’ all got t’ meet Iron Man while I was stuck in the depths o’ hell in Bulgaria!” The rest of her comment took a moment to settle in, and he stilled. “Y’ all were there for th’ second invasion?” She could have been bloody killed, and he’d never have known, buried in SHIELD’s outpost the way he’d been.

She winced. “Yes?” she said. “But we’re fine! We’re fine, Fitz. Look! Married,” she held up their clasped hands as evidence. “Fine. And yes, I met Iron Man. I’m sorry I didn’t mention it, but I sort of proposed to you the night you got back and I’ve been-”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, hold the phone,” Skye said. “Sim-Jemma proposed to Fitz?” She looked at them both with a dawning smile. “You guys are so precious I could die.”

Fitz gave Skye a withering look, irritated at her interrupting their conversation. “I’m no’ mad, bu’... is there anythin’ else I should know abou’ those seven months I was gone?” He hadn’t asked, figuring Jemma would tell him if there was anything important. Clearly, he’d been wrong.

She sighed. “You’ve been on the team. You know how it is--sometimes missions are nothing. Sometimes it gets dangerous. If you want, we’ll go back through the file and I’ll see what I can remember, but here and now is not the time.”

His fingers tightened around hers. “I’m sorry, I jus’... I guess I wasna thinkin’ that you all were still goin’ out on missions while I was stuck in tha’ bloody bunker.” Fitz sucked in a breath and leaned in to press a kiss to her temple, reassuring her that he wasn’t mad, just unsettled. “You’re righ’, we can talk abou’ it later.”

“Shh,” Skye hissed, waving for silence as Fury’s….well, fury abated and Coulson managed to get in a word edgewise.

“When the council elected to fire a nuclear warhead at New York City, you made a call. That call went against the chain of command because you were doing would save thousands of lives. You knew it because you knew your team, you believed in them. You trusted them to get the job done. Trusted they knew what they were doing. Well I’m making that call now. I should have made it before, instead of letting Hand and the bureaucratic bylaw lovers at the council come close to ruining not only two of the best minds S.H.I.E.L.D. has, but two of the most dedicated young agents I’ve ever met.”

“Jemma? Hurled herself out of a plane because she knew she was endangering her team. Fitz refused to abandon Agent Ward in Ossetia and stayed to complete his mission, green, even knowing there was no extraction team. They’re smart. They’re brave. And I don’t give a rat’s ass what the council thinks. I stand by their decision. I’ve seen what they can do, together and individually, and if the council doesn’t want them--married or not--then the powers that be at S.H.I.E.L.D. are, frankly, too stupid to win this war. Maybe we’ll all join Stark Industries.”

Fitz’ eyes popped wide at Coulson’s vehement defense of his actions and of them, his cheeks flushing red with pleased embarrassment. It wasn’t until the final sentence that he realized what Coulson was doing, though, potentially ruining his own career with SHIELD to save theirs. His eyes swung over to the closed office door, then back, meeting Skye’s for a moment, and then locking against Jemma’s. “Well, I’m th’ one who accused him o’ no’ caring enough. I guess he proved me wrong,” Fitz murmured guiltily, his voice quiet. “Never expected he’d try t’ throw everythin’ away.”

“Is that what you said to him,” came a voice behind him, and they all jumped, turning to find May standing there, her arms crossed, an eyebrow quirked. “No wonder he’s been…” she sighed. “Well, it doesn’t matter. I guess we just have to wait and see what Fury decides.” She sighed. “I guess I ought to dust off my CV. Just in case. Or maybe I can just punch Stark in the face once or twice and he’ll hire me on as an accountant.”

“You’d leave, too?” Fitz rocked back, stunned by the idea of Melinda May leaving SHIELD. Because of this. Because of him and Jemma. He knew May had accepted them a long time ago, but she’d never been especially warm and Fitz had often wondered if she only tolerated FitzSimmons because they were part of the team. He had the sudden urge to hug the older woman, but shoved it down. He couldn’t imagine how she’d react and probably didn’t want to know.

“If S.H.I.E.L.D.’s willing to let go of half my team, Coulson’s right. They’ve lost sight of what it takes to win. Why we’re fighting in the first place,” May said. “SHIELD spends so much time working with super-powered people, sometimes the organization seems to forget that most of us are humans, and post of those with powers at least started out that way.”

Jemma looked down, looking at her hands on her thighs, and swallowed. “You mean, you think it’s only to be expected that people like us, who work so closely together, in such dangerous situations, spending so much time away from anywhere we might call home, would crave and find comfort in relationships. That it’s bound to happen, whether it’s against the rules or not.”

May nodded, and there was something in her face that told Jemma she was thinking not of them, precisely, but of something more personal.

There was sudden silence from inside Coulson’s office, and Fitz realized he’d missed something.

“Fine,” Coulson’s voice snapped out. “We’ll talk again then.” There was another noise that sounded suspiciously like a glass being heavily set on a table and then, “Either come in or go away. Stop hovering around my door pretending you’re not eavesdropping.”

Fitz glanced at Jemma, then at May and Skye. “I think i’ might be better if Coulson doesna see me an’ Jemma righ’ this second. We can thank him later.” He looked nervously at Coulson’s office door. Both Skye or May would have a better chance of calming the senior agent down after Fury’s call.

He curled his hand around Jemma’s arm and gently tugged her toward the stairs down to the main level of the Bus.

At the base of the stairs, she turned to face Fitz and blew out a breath. “Do you think they’re serious about leaving?” she asked, twisting the tips of her fingers a little. She’d received a text from her mum, who had been equal parts shocked and ecstatic to find that they had “eloped” (though Jemma wasn’t certain she quite saw it that way). She’d promised her mum a more formal ceremony when they could find the time, and given her leave to tell Liam and Callum, both of whom had immediately called Fitz to make threats and congratulations.

“Yeah. Yeah, I do,” Fitz said softly. “Neither Coulson or May are in th’ habit o’ makin’ idle threats.” He studied Jemma, blue eyes searching her face. “What do y’ think? I know we’d said we’d go, an’ we mentioned Stark Industries, bu’ I didna think i’ would be tha’ easy. I mean… in charge of R&D? Chris’, Jem, can y’ imagine?”

“It would be a different atmosphere, for certain,” she said. “You’d be good leading a team, I think. The issue would be in making certain we have people who work well with the types of things we’re looking to make. Honestly, we’d probably be running separate teams, and working together on the idea and synthesis side. Although I could see it working differently.”

Fitz thought about that for a long moment, “I could lead people I trusted t’ do th’ righ’ thing. Is no’ always th’ case though, especially if we were takin’ on employees Stark already has workin’ for him.” He continued on down the hall to his bunk, tapping in his passcode and letting Jemma go in first. “It would be a hell o’ a lo’ o’ work, though. I’ve heard Stark is pretty demandin’.”

She turned, reached out, and grabbed his shirt over his stomach, hauling him through the door and against her. “As if you’ve ever been afraid of work, Mr. Dr. Fitz.”

“No, bu’ is differen’ when y’ have someone breathin’ down your neck, wantin’ somethin’ before you’re ready t’ hand i’ over,” Fitz pointed out. He made a soft noise when Jemma tugged him forward, a hand fumbling out to hurriedly shut the door behind them. “Want somethin’, lass?”

“I might,” she said, grinning up at him, “want a couple of somethings.” She lifted onto the balls of her feet and bumped her nose into his. “But you’ll have to guess what they are.”

The engineer chuckled and pressed a kiss to both her cheeks. “There, a couple of kisses. Done,” he teased. His fingers landed on her hips, bracing Jemma up on her toes and urge her to lean in, letting him take her weight.

She was grinning. “That was a near guess, anyway,” she said, bumping the end of his nose with hers. “I have something for you.”

“Oh?” Fitz drew back to study her face curiously. What could she be plotting? He already felt like he’d been handed the world when Jemma agreed to marry him.

She reached into her back pocket, extracting the small parcel her dad had sent her and extracting a pair of gold bands, one etched with orange blossoms. She took Fitz’s hand and slid the larger of the two onto his left ring finger. “These were my great grandparents’ rings,” she said. “Mum said they didn’t even have to change the sizing for yours.”

“Jemma,” Fitz’ heart leapt into his throat. He knew how much Jemma had loved - and missed - her great grandparents. They’d passed a few weeks apart not long after he’d met Jemma at the Academy, and she’d been a wreck. For her to have asked for their rings, to make those rings their own wedding bands… Fitz knew it meant a lot to her. He stared at the wide band for a long moment. It was just a simple gold circlet, but what it represented was anything but simple.

He plucked the small, more delicate ring from her and gently took slipped it on her finger, biting his lip at the sight of it there. She was his, forever now. Everything he was feeling was written all over Fitz’ face as always, and he fixed his eyes on hers as he lifted her hand to press a kiss to the ring. “I love y’, Jemma Catherine.”

She reoriented her hand in his, pressing palm to palm and threading their fingers, then mirrored it with her other hand. “I love you too, Leo Fitz.”

 

>   
>  September 1, 2014
> 
> Leo Fitz; Jemma Fitz  
>  Engineer; Biochemist  
>  Level 5
> 
> Re: Section 17
> 
> Agents Fitz:
> 
> Please see the memorandum below, which has been copied into your files:
> 
> Effective August 31, 2014, agents Leopold Fitz and Jemma Fitz nee Simmons are granted exemption from the ‘No Fraternization’ Clause in Section 17 of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Field Agent Protocol Manual due to extenuating personal circumstances. Based on extensive character references, it has been determined by the council and Agents Fitz and Fitz’s immediate supervisors that the nature of the relationship will have no adverse effects on the agents’ abilities to serve S.H.I.E.L.D. in the expected capacity.
> 
> Based upon evidence of avoidable mental, emotional, and physical trauma due to the forced isolation of Agent Leopold Fitz, it has been determined that no disciplinary action will be taken for the mindful breach of Section 17 on July 30, 2014.
> 
> Extending congratulations on your recent nuptials,
> 
> Fury  
>  Director  
>  Level 14


End file.
